Rosary in Her Pocket

Published by Forum Communications Echo Press on March 9, 2022

At the age of 6, Mary Strasser spent 18 months as a prisoner in a Russian concentration camp with her mother after being forced out of their Yugoslavian home because of their German origin.

Mary was born in Vršac, Yugoslavia – now Serbia – in 1938, where she grew up on a farm with her older half-brother, Josef Milliker, of 15 years. His father died due to a gunshot to the spine during a robbery.

“He's my half brother, but I don't ever say that because to me, he is my brother,” said Mary.

In 1937, fourteen years after her first husband's death, Mary's mother, Helen (Kuhn) Fischer, married again to Mary's father, Johann Fischer.

A few years after Mary was born, her brother moved to Germany to live with his grandfather on his late dad’s side, as he was expected to inherit his land.

The town of Vršac was a farming community, but instead of wide-open fields on hundreds of acres, these farms shared common walls with their neighbors with crops and livestock raised on the back end of narrow properties.

Mary describes the farmsteads as similar to the businesses on Broadway in Alexandria. Little to no room separating each property.

Her parents raised grapes, grains and vegetables and livestock. In their cellar, her parents turned grapes into wine which they sold to local hotels. To this day, Mary says she is reminded of her parent's cellar every time she visits Carlos Creek Winery.

“The smell always stayed with me,” she said.

Mary said her early childhood memory is pretty vague, but she does remember life was good.

Unfortunately, that all changed in October of 1944 when Russian soldiers took her father from the family farm.

As Hitler’s invading army stormed across Europe, Allies began to push back on Eastern and Western fronts. From the Yugoslavia side, Russian forces pushed west towards Berlin, capturing German descendants along the way.

Many fled, but Johann, while in his 50s, did not want to leave everything he had worked hard for throughout his life.

According to Mary, the Russians burned through the town looking for German soldiers.

“They started shooting churches, harassing and scaring people, going from house to house,” Mary remembers.

One day, two Russian soldiers came to Mary’s home. From the view of her bedroom window, Mary saw the soldiers speak with her father. They told him he had to go with them, and when he refused, they threatened to shoot him in front of his family.

Mary watched as her father disappeared in the distance with the soldiers.

“Then my mother and I were alone… They took 100 men that day,” said Mary.

The captured men were taken to a military prison set up in town.

For a short while, Mary and only Mary could visit her father in the prison camp. Spouses of the prisoners were not allowed to visit, only the children.

During Mary’s limited visits, she hugged and kissed her father and passed on messages from her mother.

On Mary’s third trip to the prison, it was vacant.

“I never saw my father again. I never heard anything from him,” said Mary.

Three weeks later, in the early morning of November of 1944, Russians came to her neighborhood and told everyone to be in front of the house in five minutes, or they would be shot, leaving them little time to gather personal belongings.

Mary wanted to take a doll her brother gave her during one of his visits home. Her mother told her no as they didn’t know they were going and told Mary to bring her pillow instead.

“That was the last time I saw my home,” Mary said. “I was scared. We were both scared. Mother always said, as bad as things got, I never complained. And I never cried, which I can't believe, but that's what she always said. ”

Mary, Helen, and the rest of the people in their town were forced to march through the night and by morning, they arrived in a new town unfamiliar to Mary.

The Russian soldiers forced the residents of this new town — who Mary assumed were not of German descent — to take in their recently captured prisoners.

They lived there until April of 1945 when they were rounded up into the town square and forced to give up their jewelry. Soldiers would often yank earrings out of people's lobes if they weren't presented in time.

“They would be that cruel,” Mary remarked. “They even dug out gold fillings from people's teeth.”

Next, the soldiers separated the able-bodied women from the elderly women and children, including Mary and Helen.

Helen was sent back to Vršac to work, and Mary was sent to a different town to live in a shell of a house with nothing but piles of straw and corn husks for mattresses.

“They gave us two blankets, one to cover the straw and one to cover ourselves,” said Mary.

Fortunately, Helen's elderly aunt was with her, so she was not completely alone.

The poor living conditions caused everyone to become lice-infested. When she brushed out her braids, Mary said the lice scattered by the dozens.

Then, in October of 1945, Mary and Helen miraculously reunited.

“When she saw me, I was so lice-infested, she couldn't believe it,” Mary recalled.

Taking the advice from a friend, Mary’s mother doused her head in petroleum and wrapped her hair in cloth to kill off the lice. But over the night, the petroleum leaked onto Mary’s neck and gave her blistering burns.

“But I haven’t had any lice since!” Mary chuckled.

In November of 1945, two months after WWII ended, Mary and her mother and the other captives were placed in cattle cars. They trekked for three days and three nights until they arrived at a Russian concentration camp.

For the next 18 months, Mary and her mother were held as captives in living quarters shared by 14 others.

During this time, illness and starvation ran rampant through the prisoners. They lived off of bug-infested pea soup and one loaf of cornbread a day rationed between the others in their room. To this day, Mary refuses to eat pea soup.

If there were five, six crumbs on the floor, then there were five, six children after those crumbs,” said Mary.

Mary herself was close to death three times. She remembers a candle burning next to her bed, which was customary when someone was close to death. She asked her mother if she was going to die. All she could respond with was, “only the Lord knows.”

“I was skin and bones,” Mary said.

A few times, a boy in the camp provided Mary’s mother with dead pigeons he shot with his slingshot. Her mother cooked the pigeons in boiling water and fed them to Mary to help her regain health.

“One day in April of 1947, a man came and said to my mother, ‘You're needed in front of the church.’ My mother said, 'I can't go to the front of the church. They are all locked shut,'” Mary remembered. “You could not be visibly praying and get caught because they would kill you.”

When a second person came and insisted Mary’s mother come to the church, she went. She found a group of people looking at wedding photos and a letter to accompany them.

“They were looking at wedding pictures of my brother,” Mary said.

After the war, he moved to Salzburg, Austria, where he met a woman and married. Not knowing where his family was, he wrote to their home address in Vršac.

“How that letter got to us in the concentration camp. I don't have an answer,” Mary admitted. "I've always said it was a miracle; it was supposed to find us. I found out years later that my mother carried a Rosary in her pocket, and she prayed secretly.”

“She said, ‘Didn't you know that I had this Rosary in my hand? And when things really got bleak, I would pray, and it gave me strength,’” Mary said, referring to her mother.

Near the end of their imprisonment in Russia, Mary Strasser's mother, Helen Fischer, received a letter and photos from her son, Josef Milliker; in April of 1947.

Mary’s brother had been forcibly drafted into the German army. During this time, he suffered an appendix attack and needed surgery. When he started recovering, he was told he would soon be sent back to the fight, so he ripped open his wound to prolong his time in the hospital. By the time he was healed, the war had ended.

After the war, Mary's brother moved to Salzburg, Austria, where he met a woman and married. Not knowing where his family was, he wrote to their home address in Vršac.

“How that letter got to us in the concentration camp. I don't have an answer,” Mary admitted. "I've always said it was a miracle; it was supposed to find us. I found out years later that my mother carried a Rosary in her pocket, and she prayed secretly.”

Not long after receiving the letter, Mary, Helen, and the rest of the camp were again put on wagons and transported to a new town but abandoned by the Russians this time.

“We were on our own. The Russians were not part of us anymore. They just said you stay here and that's it,” Mary said.

By this time, Mary was 8, and she and her mother were on their own in an unfamiliar town. But by the grace of God, a family took them in and gave them food, shelter and medicine.

"They took my mother and I and some other people to the doctor. We got medicine for our malaria and other things," said Mary.

The next step was to get to her brother in Austria.

During the middle of the night in July of 1947, Mary, Helen and 32 others began the journey to the Hungarian border.

"Before we got to the border, we were caught. There was some post where the Russians were, and they had German Shepherd dogs. They must have sniffed us. Because they came barking and found us," remembers Mary.

By this time, it was early morning. When the Russians approached the group, they acted civilly. They gave the group food and held them at the post until the next shift took over. Then they led the group themselves to the border.

Out of the group was a family of three also traveling to Austria, Mary and Helen decided to travel with them, and together the five-some continued their journey.

Mary said they walked many kilometers a day and slept in barns at night. They crossed cornfields, remote landscapes, Russian-occupied towns, worked odd jobs for food, and contracted malaria, again. And twice more, they were caught and questioned but always released.

Finally, on Nov. 1, 1947, they entered the city of Salzburg, Austria and reunited with her brother. Mary was so malnourished she was still nothing but skin, bones and a bloated stomach.

Mary soon started school for the first time at nine years old, and her mother took multiple jobs to provide for them.

After four years of living in Austria, her mother heard of a program helping people immigrate to America, the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

Helen began going to presentations that displayed what America had to offer immigrants. Being a farmer, she was especially interested in the big cattle ranches in Texas. However, she thought the idea of a man in a white coat dropping off crates of milk from door to door was propaganda. Nonetheless, she was sold.

At first, Josef was hesitant about coming to America. He was comfortable with the life he started to build in Austria with his wife, who now had two children, but he got on board when he saw his mom was serious about immigrating.

All in all, between questioning about Nazi affiliation from the American Consulate, paperwork, physicals and immunizations, it took over a year for the family to finally board the ship.

On Aug. 25, 1951, just a few days before Mary's 13th birthday, she and her mother set sail for New York City on the U.S.S. General W. C. Langfitt. Ten days later, they arrived in New York City.

"They probably told us in New York, where my brother was, but we couldn't understand English," said Mary.

Josef arrived in America weeks prior due to Mary and Helen's paperwork issues.

Just days after arriving in New York City, Mary and Helen boarded a train to Chicago and then to Duluth.

"My mother just about went nuts on the train, not knowing where her son and his family was. She thought she had made a mistake coming here," Mary remembers. "It was all her idea. And she'll never see her son and his family and her grandchildren again. She was just beside herself.

When they arrived in Duluth on Sept. 6, they were finally reunited with Josef, and Mary said her mother never had regrets about coming to America again. Especially when she saw the milkman was real.

Helen took a job as a housekeeper at St. Mary's hospital in Duluth, and Mary enrolled in 16 one-hour English classes in preparation for school. She learned by reading books like "Dick and Jane."

"My mother said I learned English in three weeks. Well, I don't think that's quite true. But it was not hard for me. I got better grades in English than I did in German in Austria," Mary said.

"On April 13, 1952, it was Easter Sunday. I met Tony," Mary said.

Tony Strasser, originally from Yugoslavia, also immigrated to America with his family after the war. Tony's mother had a mutual friend with Mary's mom who invited both families over for Easter dinner.

"When I saw the blond hair he had, and I saw the blue eyes..." Mary broke off mid-memory.

"She fell in love with me," Tony finished with a grin.

A year after meeting, Tony asked her out on a date through a letter.

"I was thrilled. And I cried when I got the letter. My sister-in-law asked, 'What are you crying for?' And I showed it to my mother, and I thought she'll never let me go," said Mary.

But Helen let Mary go under one condition. They needed to have a chaperone with them.

Between Helen, Mary's brother and sister-in-law, or her 5-year-old nephew, Tony and Mary were never alone on their dates. Until one day Tony went to talk to Helen about his intentions and she gave them the "OK" to be alone.

"I don't know what he told her, but she must have believed him," said Mary.

And on July 14, 1956, they got married, six weeks before Mary's 18th birthday.

They lived in Duluth for eight years, then moved to Lamberton for 45 until eventually retiring in Alexandria. In their years together, they became U.S. citizens, Tony joined the Army, they raised a family, and their love continued to grow, along with their patriotism. Tony Strasser passed away on March. 7, 2022.

"God bless America. I am so proud to be an American. Thank you for the life we have here," Mary said. "We love this land so much. Never abuse your freedom. Don't ever do something to this flag that I think so much of because it represents freedom."