My Grandmother, the spy

What happens to her between October of 1945 and December of 1953 I know very little of.  I must give my thanks at this point to the National Archives and what becomes the CIA.  I’ve spent a lot to time trying to research history surrounding her story on-line.  I was Googling trying to find any Armanski’s and trying to find any history on the name, other than the fact is seems to be another name for Armenian. I don’t understand.  There are very few Armanski’s, maybe 20 – 30 or so left worldwide. I have tried to contact some to them.  It is my guess that Oma’s father, Conrad, must have had brothers.  I am beginning to believe the name is made up.  That the family name is originally Arman and they added –ski to make it more Polish.  Maybe to work?  I don’t know and what’s worse is no one at this point can tell me. 

So one night I am just Googling away and I Google Oma’s name, “Ilse Armanski,” for shits and giggles because I know it is not there. I am shocked to find that a file exists on her in the National Archives.  That it is a file by an agent, in what is to eventually became the CIA.  Now there had been rumors in the family that Oma was a spy and that she was later blacklisted.  It made no sense.  How could she have become an American citizen then?  I sent away for the file.

What I received I did not expect.  There were over 200 pages of documents on my Grandmother, her family, her children, and the fathers of her children.  I was floored.   But I am ever grateful for that agent.  He presented me with a 6 month window of her life, during those mystery years, that I would have otherwise not have known.

The family is alive and intact, but life is very hard.  They have resettled in Bremen, Germany.  Why there I don’t know.  During these years Oma gives birth to two little boys, both with different American Servicemen fathers.  What these men promised her, I don’t know.  Both had families back in the states.  Soldiers having children with German women seems to have been a problem for the US government.  The Americans issue statements that tell these women that just because they have had children by Americans they have no rights to anything.  The agent reports Oma going on base frequently.  She goes to one of the fathers to beg for money to feed her child.  He slaps her and berates her. 

The agent reports that Conrad is a communist.  He does not work.  Now if that is because he is too old, hurt in some way or unable to find work I don’t know.  Conrad tells his girls one day, “Get back out there.”  I think, but as of yet cannot confirm, Conrad was pimping his girls out.  I asked Grandpa one time, what Oma did after the war to survive.  He simply said, “She did what she had to.”  It always made me wonder if she was a sex worker.  I can understand.  She had few skills and was a woman with kids to feed.  You do what you have to.  My other question is where did she learn English?  Did she learn it in school?  Did she just pick it up?  She had to have known enough to get on base and communicate with these men.  And my Grandfather’s German was rudimentary at best. 

It is during this time that she meets a man who turns out to be an agent of the Czechoslovakian government.  I don’t know what he says to her, but she ends up going with him for three days.  She later says she is taken into Czechoslovakia, and taken before a high ranking man.  He asks her to steal a Starscope, which is a precursor to our modern day Night Vision.  The then gives her money and sends her home.  She arrives home, spends the money and never, it seems, tries to acquire the Starscope.   She uses the money to buy coats for her family, shoes for her children, and I believe her first camera.  She begins to take pictures of her family, for the first time since the war.  The agent assigned to report on her states that she does not have the mental capacity or the necessary connections to steal the Starscope. 

At some point the plot is revealed and she is taken into custody.  She must write a full confession of all the events that occurred.  It even makes “Der Spiegel,” the local newspaper.  They make her sound like a fool.  I believe she did not have the connections, but she also didn’t have the heart.

Oma meets my Grandfather, James “Buddy” Parker, at a party in January of 1954.   He is a Merchant Marine.  They are married a few days later. My mother and her twin are born nine months later.  I asked my Grandfather one time where they were conceived.  He says, “On our honeymoon, cruising on a boat off the coast of Italy.”    They go back to Germany where he leaves her.  He arranges passage for her on a ship back to his home in Corpus Christi, Texas.  She arrives in America knowing no one but her husband.  It is probable one of the first times she is truly alone. 

At some point during all this they begin to understand that getting her two other boys out of Germany is going to be difficult.  So they remain with her family in Bremen.  It takes them almost a year.  They finally have to have the Lutheran Church step in and help them. 

They do a little state hoping, going back to Grandpa’s home in Louisiana, then Washington state, and then finally back to North Western Louisiana to stay. 

Ilsa