If we close our eyes to what happened in the world, there's never hope.

— Fred Platner

Biography

Fred Platner was born in Amsterdam, Holland, on August 4, 1917. His family moved during his childhood to Chemnitz, Germany, and later to Bielsko-Biala, Poland. The latter city was one of the first to be invaded by the German army in September 1939. Fred was assigned to forced labor but escaped and found his way to the Russian lines. In late 1940, he and other ex-Poles were arrested by Soviet authorities and shipped to Siberia.

Fred spent nearly a year in a Siberian labor camp until the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. After traveling for a year in Russia, Fred arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in Central Asia. He worked as a truck driver for a Russian army camp until the end of hostilities in Europe in 1945.

After the war, he worked in displaced persons camps between 1947 and 1950 in Austria and Germany. Before leaving for the United States, Fred returned to Poland as well as to his hometown in Germany. He found only a handful of surviving relatives and a cold reception by former friends.

In late 1951, Fred and his wife, Ruth von Lange, settled in Madison, Wisconsin. The next year they relocated to Wausau, where he rose to become vice president of the Wausau Steel Corporation. The Platners had three daughters and divorced in 1974. Fred died in 1988.

Pictures

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