8/6/2023 0 Comments Vicious circle 2009![]() In the bathroom, neatly cut-up newspapers took the place of toilet paper. We had dinner in a vegetarian restaurant. “They are eating ground- up rats,” my father answered. “There is really no food available,” Papa said, “and in the morning we’ll be glad to have that with our tea.” The bread had been packed in layers of wax paper and linen towels. Paris seemed silent.Īfter we unpacked, Mama produced a very large, round corn bread from our deli in Woodmere. In Paris, a cab took us to the Hotel Regina, an old world hotel near the Louvre. We looked at the countryside with its ripped-up roads, burned-out barns, exposed staircases leading to nowhere. We then boarded a train to Paris, still in silence. There was nothing left, just open cellars and jagged, broken walls. Thus, in the summer of 1947, my parents booked us passage on the Mauretania to Paris, where we were to meet relatives we hardly remembered.Īs we got off the tender, we stared in silence at the bombed buildings. I was now in America.įortunately, quite a few of our family back in Europe had managed to survive the war. I remember thinking that these were their stories, not mine. From the time I was 8, my older brother and I would listen to these stories. My father got a postcard from France that his sister had been deported to Auschwitz. There were rumors of horrible concentration camps in Europe. Then they would discuss what was going on during World War II. Our father would recount to us how during that war, his father, a flour miller, forfeited money and bartered his services for food. Her parents didn’t eat breakfast so there be more for the children. My mother described the hardships, how her mother had mixed sawdust with their flour rations to make it go further. Invariably they would discuss their wonderful youth in the Bukovina, which had been destroyed in World War I. On Sundays, the cousins who also had fled to the United States would visit us on Long Island. Most of our family had stayed behind in France, Romania and Russia. And thus, in 1939, we emigrated to America and settled in Woodmere, a small suburb on Long Island. ![]() She was not going to live through another war. When Hitler came to power in Germany, my mother questioned if Switzerland would be able to stay neutral. When it was over, my parents moved to Switzerland, where my brother and I were born. My parents had been born in the late 19th century in the Bukovina, in the Eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where they had suffered through the first World War. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuĪt a very young age, wholly unintended, I learned that no matter how well we feel protected, war is a vicious circle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |