The Munich Photo Plant

In the beginning, to provide immediate service, we contracted with a German photo finisher who had a plant in the small town of Bad Wiesee on the shores of Lake Tegernsee, about 30 miles south of Munich. However, as a result of what was known as the "denazification project" instituted by the Allied Forces to rout out former members of the Nazi Party, it was discovered that the photo plant owner had been a Party member. His plant was taken over by the government and Narkus became responsible for daily operations in running the plant.

It was obvious that demand would soon outstrip our ability to supply from the Bad Wiesee plant, so Narkus decided to build a new state-of-the-art plant in Munich with all new Kodak and Pako equipment shipped from the United States.

We took over a large three-story building that had housed a photographic school in Munich and was relatively undamaged by Allied bombing, After we had begun construction to repair and modify the building it suddenly occurred to us that there was a major problem. The only electrical service available in that sector of Munich was 440 volts DC. The new American equipment that was already in transit was designed for 110 volts AC. Now what?

A study of the electric grid serving Munich revealed that the nearest alternating current was in a 5,000 volt underground cable several blocks from the proposed new photo plant. After scouring the country, we finally came up with a 5,000 volt transformer that could step the power down to 110 volts. But how do we install a cable for several blocks under the city streets? The over populated prisoner of war compounds in Munich provided the answer.

Narkus somehow got a document from the Burgermeister permitting us to dig up the city streets to install the cable. We also found out that the prisoners of war were readily available to work on civic clean-up projects. All I had to do was send around a 6x6 Army truck each morning and check out 25 to 50 prisoners to dig the underground trench. In the late afternoon I would have to return and check-in the same number of prisoners.

The first week, we started with Hungarian P.O.W.'s, still in their country's uniforms, of course. The men enjoyed getting out of the crowded camp and sang as they dug up the street, inserted the heavy cable and refilled the trench. When we went to pick them up to start the second week, we found that they had been shipped out on their way back to Hungary.

"How about some Italians?" the prison commandant asked. So we picked up a truckload of Italian soldiers. They surveyed the scene and were not impressed.

"Is that all that the Hungarians could dig in a week?" they asked. "We can beat that!"

And they did.

Unfortunately, when we went to pick them the following week, they were being loaded up to be shipped back to Italy.

“I guess you’ll have to settle for some German prisoners, “ the commandant said, “but you’ll have to guard them closely.”

Fortunately we had recently been assigned another American civilian employee and a Dutch civilian employee so we let them alternate as guards, armed with our .45 caliber pistol.

The Germans contemptuously looked over the digging done by their predecessors and said they could do better than that. Which they did!

As we neared the end of the digging, our Dutchman went out one day to take over his afternoon turn at guard duty and encountered a surprising sight. The German prisoners were singing and digging with great gusto under the watchful eye of another prisoner, a German army sergeant who was armed with our .45 caliber pistol!

“Where’s the American?” the Dutchman inquired. “Oh, he’s upstairs with a blonde across the street,” the German prisoner explained.

Anyway, none of the prisoners wanted to escape and we completed the cable installation with no problems.

The new automatic film developers, electric eye controlled photo print makers and huge drum dryers were successfully installed and operated fine on our new source of electricity.

The photo plant in Bad Wiessee was shut down and most of the employees transferred to Munich. We had built dormitories on the top floor of the photo plant so that the skilled people from Bad Wiesee could stay in Munich during the week and go home for the weekends.

In addition, we hired more than 100 new employees and trained them to handle the new American equipment. Soon we were churning out as many as 25,000 to 30,000 black and white prints a day. (Color film was not yet available at the PX’s.)

Shortly after everything was running smoothly, Narkus’ employment contract expired and was not renewed, so he returned to the U.S. I was promoted to Munich Photo Plant Manager and signed a new one-year contract, to be effective after a 30-day furlough to my home in the U.S. It turned out to be a rather uneventful year as our business was good and we ended up making a profit -- which went to the United States Treasury.