Dearest grandchildren,
In this excerpt, my father, Thomas, describes some of the difficulties of everyday living in the very early 1940s.
Can you imagine spending hours per day on the task of simply finding food to eat? It wasn’t a matter of going to the grocery store, finding what you need on a well-stocked shelf, and then paying for the groceries, as it is here (now, still, anyway; the future in America has never been as tenuous as it is now!). And in most cases, it didn’t matter whether you had very little money or plenty of money; food was hard to find for everyone and coupons were required for many items.
When your parents, my children, grew out of their clothes, we simply went to the store to buy the next size up to again fill their closets. Can you imagine owning just one pair of pants, one shirt, one dress (girls never wore pants back then!)?
I was heavily influenced by my parents’ experiences during WWII (yes, my German mother experienced wartime shortages, too) and I was reminded of their experiences at almost every meal and every shopping trip during my childhood. “Eat everything on your plate; we would have been so lucky to have a meal like this!” When, in fourth grade, I complained that I only had two dresses, I was reminded that German girls during the war were lucky to have one.
My parents didn’t mean to transfer their traumatic experiences to us; it just happened. That’s called “generational trauma,” and I am coming to realize (this late in life!) that my brothers and I are the beneficiaries (“victims” is the wrong word) of it.
My three brothers (Stephan, Michael, and Christopher) and me in about 1963, along with Betsy, our dog. Michael had “graduated” to a suit and tie for this occasion, but the rest of us are wearing Bavarian loden coats (probably more from my Bavarian mother’s influence than my Saxon father’s influence). I have many photos (and memories) of my brothers wearing lederhosen as play clothes, which they must have hated, and I always had a dirndl dress – which I loved, actually! My hair is in a simple ponytail here, but I have vivid memories of a tight bun or “hoop braids”!
The daily demands on my mother to keep her Jewish husband and Mischling children safe and secure must have felt completely overwhelming to her, though we kids noticed only that she seemed increasingly nervous. Little did we know the pressure she was facing!
Life was getting harder for everyone, even those who didn’t have to constantly fear the hostile confrontations from the regime, as our family did.
Food, of course, was a constant and central concern for Mother. She spent a great deal of time and effort finding out what food was available, where, and whether rationing coupons were required.
On top of the worry about food, Mother was concerned about keeping three growing children clothed. Ulli, our sister, was easiest: as she grew, Mother could usually crochet another few centimeters to the bottom or shoulders of her dress. We boys, luckily, had Lederhosen we wore every day - the dirtier, the “cooler”! Everything wearable required a Bezugsschein (purchase certificate), another bureaucratic function handled by The Party. If one could prove (or convince a Party employee!) that one really needed a shirt or dress or new pair of shoes (or even new soles for an old pair), one would get a piece of paper authorizing the purchase. Then, one had to find it -- another time consuming and often hopeless task!
Left: me in kindergarten. My mother knit this dress and, just like my father describes, new rows were added as I grew. Right: School picture day in third grade warranted a dirndl dress.
And… next generation! Erin (Elisabeth) in the same dress, and in a dirndl. My mother (the original “Omi”!) always made sure my girls had dirndls!
My “baby” brother, Chris, wearing lederhosen, with Stephan (and another dog, “Silver”), circa 1962. Michael’s lederhosen (circa 1954) were a bit too big, yes?!
Everything was hard to get. I remember trying to find out one day how Father’s safety razor worked. When I put it back together, I over-tightened its handle so that it yanked out the screw from the head. It was irreplaceable. Father was so furious that my punishment was a whole month without allowance, and he had to resort to his old razor knife and leather strap.
Father’s pride and joy were the Cuban cigars he had saved from better days. At times, Mother liked to give a cigar as bribe or thanks to some workers or service people who were also harder and harder to find and employ. How do you tell if one cigar had been removed from the box? Father came up with a system I spent hours trying to figure out: when he, himself took one cigar out, what he left in the box had a specific relationship between the number of cigars on the top layer, the number of cigars on the right, and the number of cigars on the left. I recorded, I observed, and I showed him a record I kept. He looked at it with a quick glance and said, “They’re all right, except this one.” He had picked out the one I put in wrong just to trick him! I decided right then and there that the job of detective would never be for me. And statistician would be most questionable!
One day, a telephone repairman arrived, saying he needed to make “a repair” on the phone in Father’s sitting room. My parents must have thought of the possibility that his “repair” was actually an installation or re-wiring in order to make the receiver into a permanent wiretap. The next time my parents entertained company in that room, a guest wanted to be sure that they could talk freely, as the phone being bugged was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, he assured us. “You know, the walls have ears now!” he said. So, my mother got a fat, well-padded tea cozy and put it over the telephone. “Now we can talk.”
Chances are, Father didn’t say much worthy of a bugged phone. Whenever someone wanted to engage him in a political discussion, he cut them short: “But Herr Doktor, you know that I am a completely apolitical person!” That normally stopped the talk right then. There was only one political remark I ever overheard from Father. It came in June,1941, when Hitler invaded Russia. Father said: “The Napoleonic adventure all over again!”
Enough said! And how prophetic!
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