Fleeing in 1945 Surminski became an orphan. As one of the first widely read authors he described flight and expulsion with the will to reconciliation. For him, home is not just a place but stands for living together with familiar people.
Prior to his writing career, Arno Surminski worked as a woodcutter in Canada and later for an insurance company in Hamburg, where he lived ever since. His successful childhood memories "Jokehnen oder Wie lange fährt man von Ostpreußen nach Deutschland" (Jokehenen or How Long Does It Take to Get from East Prussia to Germany) were filmed. In addition to personal memories in his East Prussian novels, there are wide-ranging historical panoramas dating back to Napoleon's time and a documentary inspired reappraisal of National Socialism and its crimes "Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz" (The World of Birds at Auschwitz), "Winter Fünfundvierzig oder Die Frauen von Palmnicken" (Winter Forty-five or The Women of Palmnicken). His works have been translated into many languages, including Polish and Russian. To this day, he maintains friendly relations with the inhabitants of his birthplace.
Illustration:
Arno Surminski in front of the monument in Palmnicken, today the Russian Jantarny.
The memorial commemorates the long repressed and forgotten massacre of 31st January 1945, when SS soldiers drove about 3,000 Jewish women into the icy Baltic Sea and shot them. In his novel "Winter Fünfundvierzig oder Die Frauen von Palmnicken" (Winter Forty-five or The Women of Palmnicken) Surminski deals with the question of guilt and silence of the perpetrators.