Rundbrief der Familiengemeinschaft GEBHARDT – PAULUS ...

She also loved to travel around the Western U.S. with my father, Dan, as
they were able, and later on she helped to take care of her 1st
granddaughter, Heather. They were very dose.
She passed away 08 March 2006 and was buried in the Arizona National
Veteran‘s Cemetery in north Phoenix, AZ.
Lisa M. Gish (FN 516 932 3)
Elfriede Benz geb. Hardegg (FN 518 112 1)
* 5.September 1927 in Jaffa † 16. Februar 2007 in Sydney
My mother died last Friday at the age of 79. In these seventy nine years
she achieved many goals including being a supportive wife to Alfred, a
fabulous cook, a business woman, an exceptional singer and musician, and
a watercolour and oil painter. But above all she was a wonderful mother to
her children and a kind of surrogate mother to children in the
neighbourhood when I was growing up. I think this especially true in the
case of my childhood partner in crime Wayne Astill.
My mother was born Elfriede Maria Hardegg in Jaffa, Palestine on the 5 th of
September 1927. Her parents were Ernst and Meta Hardegg. The fact that
she was born here was due to her great great grandfathers Christoph
Hoffmann and Georg Hardegg who moved from Germany to Palestine to
co -found the Templer Society.
Mum had two sisters Gudrun and Gerlinde. They grew up in Jaffa until
1938 before moving to a rural settlement in Wilhelma. When war broke out
in Europe in 1939 the Templer communities in Palestine were interned
including Wilhelma. For nearly ten years mum’s childhood was behind
barbed wire fences with watch towers at intervals to make sure no one
escaped. Even though the war ended in 1945 mum and her sisters were
still interned until the Arab-Israeli broke out in 1948. It was deemed too
dangerous by the British for this community to stay here so they offered resettlement
in Australia and were sent to Cyprus to wait for a ship. On Cyprus was
prisoner of war camp for captured German soldiers. One of the young
soldiers was Alfred Benz. I only just found out from Gerlinde that my father
to be was a first aid person for the camp. This explains his nonchalant
reaction to my injuries when I was growing up. Even when I stole some
chemicals from the science lab at high school and proceeded to blow my
self up along with the part our house his reaction to the blood from my head
to my feet was cool and calm mainly because he had seen much worse in
the war. My mother on the other hand was beside herself even though I
gave her plenty of opportunities to get use to my efforts to do serious
damage to my anatomy long before this event.
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