Yesterday was an interesting day. I took my two oldest children to visit their Oma and Opa and drop off their Christmas gifts. They opened their gifts and then we sat and talked with them for a while. We learned some very interesting things about Oma's life as a child. She grew up in Germany during WW2 and told us some of her experiences.
Oma's family was bombed out twice during that war. The first time they were able to get another apartment, but when they were bombed out the second time, her family had to move in with her grandparents. They lived in a one bedroom apartment so her family had to live in the family room. A week after this happened, the war ended. The POW's in town were released and they emptied out all of the grocery stores. From that time,it would be six months of being hungry everyday with only one meal a day if there were lucky. They used to go to different bakeries and stand in line all night long. They never knew which bakery would get flour to make bread that day so she went with her mother to one bakery and her father went to another one across town. If they were in line all night they would get a half a loaf of bread in the morning if that bakery got flour that day. Sometimes one of them would get a half a loaf and sometimes both would. She would then get one slice of bread to eat that day. She used to ask her mom why her dad got two slices and she only got one and her mom told her because he needed to work and she could rest.
During that very difficult time she talked about how other people would reach out to help them when they could. There was a cookie factory close by their town and every night they swept the floor for cookie crumbs and put them in a sack. When the sack was full a farmer (that her dad did some work for) would go and pick it up to feed to his pigs. When the farmer found out they had no food, he gave them the sack and said to eat the good pieces that weren't too dirty. For almost two weeks she lived on cookie crumbs and said they tasted really good.
These stories were hard for me to hear, but also made me realize how quickly things can change overnight. It was basically overnight that her family went from having food to having nothing. The iron factory where her father worked was bombed as well as their home and so immediately they lost everything, including employment. When the grocery stores were emptied, the only food to be had was what they had in their home or what others would give to them. She talked about how important food storage is to her and I can only imagine after experiencing 6 months of being hungry all the time, how storing food would be on her priority list. I was grateful to hear her story and to learn more about her life as a child. As a mother, I can't imagine how painful it would be to watch your children go hungry everyday and have no idea when it will end. Throughout the telling of her story, she would mention how there is a basic goodness in people as others would share what little food they had with her family during that difficult time. I was grateful to have my two oldest children with me to hear these experiences and to learn from them. You never know what people have been through and why they do the things they do. I understand Oma better than I did before and appreciate her for who she is more than ever. I believe I will always look at cookie crumbs in a different way now...how could I not?
