Well, it was a sad time of year as my father passed away on Thursday 17th March 2022. Dad had been battling with prostate cancer returning, and metastases to the kidneys. The last couple of months were a struggle for him, dealing with the pain.
Dad was born in Königsberg and it was the easternmost large city in Germany until World War II. The city was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and during the Battle of Königsberg in 1945, when the Soviet Union occupied it. The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 placed it provisionally under Soviet administration, and it was annexed on 9 April 1945. Its German population was expelled, and the city was repopulated with Russians and others from the Soviet Union. It was renamed to Kaliningrad in 1946 in honour of Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin. It is now the capital of Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave bordered in the north by Lithuania and in the south by Poland. In the Final Settlement treaty of 1990, Germany renounced all claim to it.
Dad emigrated to Australia around 1954, and worked in the coal mines, then studied and became an accountant. Then he worked for the ATO and Rio Tinto, and finally retired to Port Macquarie.
With the conflict that is currently in play between Ukraine and Russia, had dad in tears with those trying to escape the conflict as it took him back to World War 2 and the need of his family to try and escape the Third Reich due to my grandfathers views on what was happening to the Jews and their treatment at the hands of those involved.
I will miss you dad, and hope to see you again.