From slave worker to university linguist

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 15

From slave worker to university linguist

By

KEN COATES

Spending the Second World War inside Nazi Germany as a slave worker was hardly ideal preparation for an academic career, but at least it left Alex Lojkine determined never again to work in a factory. It also left him proficient in German (he is also thoroughly at home with English, French, Russian and Italian.) After the war, this expertise in languages helped him with an honours degree at Melbourne University and later led to an appointment in the foreign languages department at Canterbury University. One suspects that this same kind of inner resourcefulness lies behind his decision, at the age of 65 and due to retire, to become a full-time student. He describes his reasons as “entirely therapeutic,” and on January 31, 1986, Alex Lojkine will relinquish his post as reader in Russian and become a Ph.D. student, exploring the science of linguistics. A man with a slightly theatrical air about him, he waves away a suggestion that he has had an interesting life. Born in Istanbul of parents from Russia, he was brought up in Paris. His father, a Russian army officer, died before Alex was born, and in France he and his mother “were grindingly poor.” Sending him to university meant considerable sacrifice, but he began studying industrial chemistry. Europe was on the brink of war. As a patriotic young Frenchman, he was conscripted and was due for call-up late in June, 1940. France fell to the victorious army of the Third Reich early in that month, and Alex’s world changed dramatically. Only 20, he

was packed off to Germany, like thousands of other conquered; Europeans, to work in factories backing the war effort. He was put to work in a plant making four-gallon cans, and reckons that during the time he was there he helped make 3,500,000, taking them out of. the press and stacking them.

The repetitive job destroyed any ideas he had of the nobility of labour and he found others were better workers than he. He coped, but when faced, with placing washers on screws lasted only three days. “I suspect I was a survivor,” he adds, recalling that for him the worst aspect of factory work was ending the day dirty. Somehow, he managed a transfer to what he calls assorted clerking work which gave him a good working knowledge of German. People were patriotic in a Germany which at first was winning the war, Alex recalls. Unpleasant restrictions applied, but the years 1940 to 41 were rather like an extension of the phoney war. No restrictions were placed on his movements, and he was issued with ration tickets, although these did not entitle him to as much food as “the superior Herrenvolk.” He remembers buying chocolate in Berlin in the early years of the war.

The Germans in their efficient way had precise details of his Russian origins. (His mother came from a land-owning family in Russia and had an aggressively Hungarian name, Kozina, which is his middle name.) When Stalin declared war on Germany, Alex Lojkine was arrested by the Gestapo and he recalls the apprehension he felt when his belongings were searched.

“You see I was interested in naval warfare, and had bought, quite openly, a copy of the German book equivalent to ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships.’ I also studied forensic science and had a book about hand weapons and their use.” After a spirited discussion with the S.S. man about one of Germany’s leading authorities on guns, the young alien’s unorthodox interests appeared to be accepted. He was interned for a brief period and then released. ; Brought up in France, with its revolutionary traditions, Alex Loj-

kine had absorbed a set of “reasonably strong democratic principles.” He lived during the 'war in Germany, and travelled to Italy, two countries notably at odds with those principles. He was keenly aware of persecution of Jews in Germany, nut says many stayed on because they had much to lose by fleeing. At first, they were prepared to suffer the humiliations of wearing the yellow star, taking last place in queues, travelling in the rear of trains, and standing at the back of buses. Not so widely known is the

persecution of gypsies, thousands of whom were sent to gas chambers. He recalls seeing a file on a man, who was only a small part gypsy. Leafing through the official correspondence, he found it dealt with whether the taan should be castrated. Technically a State-less person in Europe, Alex Lojkine does not identify strongly with the culture of any particular country, though he says he comes from Paris and finds it easiest to count, for example, in French. Perhaps exposure to several cul-

tures makes it too easy to see other points of view, “too easy for comfort sometimes,” he concedes. , He is unable to go along with , a sweeping' condemnation of the whole German race. “I can understand German feelings and see how it was possible for some people to literally not; know of death camps sited} within five miles of where they lived,” he says. And if Germany had won the war? He suspects that although various categories of people would have -suffered horribly, the world would have shaken down to some-

thing not too different from the world of today. Once, while in Saint Nazaire, a French port used as a German submarine base, he was caught in a bombing raid by the R.A.F. which destroyed the town,, but did little damage to protected U-boats in concrete bunkers.

Some of the men who dropped the bombs later became colleagues in Australia. They had served in Bomber Command.

At war’s end he was in Italy, where he was accepted as an assisted immigrant to Australia. He does not say much about his contract to perform certain work for two years, but repeats his aversion to factory employment. He became a teacher of English at centres for displaced Europeans and migrants, first at Bonegilla, near Albury-Wodonga, and then at Rushworth. Victoria.

His English was learned first at school in Paris, and later through reading Bulldog Drummond novels that had not been translated into French or made into films.'

The camp was 15km from , the town of Rushworth which had a declining population and five pubs. It was on the edge of the Mallee country where the bush-type eucalypt churned up the soil into near dust-bowl conditions.

“They say the crows fly backwards there to keep the dust out of their eyes,” he says. There, the new Australian with the strange-looking name, but with the immense advantage of sufficient command of English to be rude back to the dinkum Aussies — even educated ones — resolved to undertake a university course and finish it with honours.

“I knew I had no-one to help me, that I would have to study fulltime, and that I had to have an edge on everybody else.” During his four years at Mel-

bourne University he also worked writing threatening letters for Myers emporium to people who owed the firm money. •} He graduated with honours in French and Russian. Some threehour translation exam papers he finished in 45 minutes.

His age of 35 excluded him from entering the Commonwealth public service scheme for graduates, who had to be 25 or under. }■ •}

He worked in the library of the astronomical observatory in Canberra, later taken over by the Australian National University ("a non-job,”) and after’ that in the administration office of the University of Tasmania. ✓

When Russian received more emphasis at Canterbury University, he was appointed a lecturer.® 1961. —

While next year Alex Lojkine will not arrive at the university pp the 6.30 a.m. bus, his familiar' figure will still be seen about the campus.

He will no doubt continue to crash his fist on the table to emphasis disagreement, though.he dismisses as a myth the story that he can swear in 27 languages.. Alex Lojkine the student will complete his B.Sc., towards which he needs only 12 points, by way of a first-year psychology course “that looks quite interesting.” He will also begin his Ph.D. which he expects to take three years. £ “I can’t play bowls or paint, so for me it is essential if I am not to have an identity crisis,” he saysS His research will be concerned with the information content m words and phrases, with particular emphasis on measurement. For anyone genuinely interested, Alex Lojkine will no doubt explain the possible implications, marshalb ing a vocabulary of English words that would put many a native-born New Zealander in the shade. -