On the left, a wooden box measures 30x20x10cm. It was made in the prison carpentry shop by my mother's father​, my Opa Hermann Jatow. The in-laid monogramme says 'EJ' - Eva Jatow, my mother living in Swakopmund. He sent it as a birthday present. 
A second box, same dimensions, also made by Opa, sent to his wife Frieda who shared her birthday with my mother. Inside the lid Opa inscribed: KZL - 14 April 1940. KZL = Konzentrationslager or concentration camp. Today it would be appropriate to refer the prison camp as a POW camp because concentration camp evokes places Germany built during that war to mistreat and exterminate people in a way that did not happen here - whatever the severe hardship Opa and the inmates experienced for five years. The photo of Oam and Opa was taken at their home in Rustenburg, a converted horse stables in the yard of the Heine family. I experienced Opa as a quiet man who more than once - I recall - said to my father (about the Third Reich): Das war alles ein grosser Fehler (It was all a big mistake). Opa earned his income as a carpenter and music teacher until the end of his life. They were poor. Never owned a house, car nor had any wealth. 
The camp Opa was is initially is today near the town Jan Kempdorp. Later they were held near Pretoria in a camp known as Andalucia.

The Jatow's.

Eva Jatow is my mother. In 1944 she and Wihelm Kleinschmidt got married in the German Lutheran Church in Swakopmund, Namibia. Eva's parents, my maternal grandparents, Opa, Hermann Jatow and Oma Frieda came to German South West Africa before WWI. Opa worked for Telefunken. He built the Funkenstation (telecommunications facility) in Windhoek for the colonial power in Windhoek. He had built similar installations in other German colonies, including Togo and Tsingtao. WWI stopped him and his family to return to Germany. After the war the relations in Germany write that they should stay in DSWA, even if he was unemployed, because of poverty and hunger in Germany.    


Opa Gerhard Jatow and his daughter Ilse in Windhoek. Ilse was the oldest of five children.










Oma, Frieda, daughter Ilse, and Opa Hermann Jatow, ca. 1914 in Windhoek. 







Männe, Hermann jr, youngest of five children. Sent from Swakopmund to Germany to be educated in a political school of the Nazi party. At the start of WWII he was trained as a pilot. He was shot down over the USSR on one of his first missions. Was POW in Siberia until the end of the war. 
Die Badewanne, the bath tub, favourite walking destination from Swakopmund southwards. On the left, Tante Martha Jaacks, sister to Frieda Jatow.