Re: Questions for Cleveland, Ohio USA
Kees Vanderheyden (keesv@sympatico.ca)
Thu, 20 Nov 1997 18:05:48 -0400
Dear Liz and friends,
I'll try to answer some of your questions. Let me say first that my
experience is that of a Dutch boy especially during the end of the
German occupation. I was then eleven years old.
Food.
We had enough of some stuff, like potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes,
but practically no butter, little meat, no sweet stuff, no sugar, no
fruit, quite awful bread. Little milk (most powered milk). During the
war food was an obsession, although we did not realize the trouble our
parents went through to get us food. As a kid what struck me most at the
liberation was the food the allied soldiers ate. Their nice white bread,
real butter, chocolate, meat. Paradise!! They would give us of their
rations.
Money
I had no notion of money and I don't know what money was worth. I do
know that everybody with something of value would barter it for food. My
dad would trade wool for meat or something.
Schools.
for most of the war, the schools functioned normally. Toward the end we
had daily anti air-raid practices. We'd dive under our desks or sit
agains the wall of the hall. During the very last months of the war, we
were "lucky", we had no school as their was no more coal to heat them
and the German used the to put their soldiers in.
Hobbies
We use to play war with wooden rifles and cooking pots on our heads. We
(the boys n particular) were always busy truing to invent weapons (and
steal stuff from the GErmans). We would sing mocking versions of German
songs and imitate the goose step of the occupiers. We also did quite a
bit of circus with our friends, cats and dogs. We would not go out very
often because the roads were daily targets of Allied air attacks. The
Germans stole our bicycles so we could not go biking. Somehow we did
have lots of excitement, ignorant as we were of the reality of death and
destruction, at least during most of the war years. The end was more
frightening.
Women.
Our mother worked incredibly had to do more with less. To invent other
patatoe recepies, make news cloths out of old. Some younger women went
out with German soldiers and were severely (and for us kids very
unjustly) humiliated after the war.
I hope this answers some of your question. If not, you're always
welcome.
Au revoir
Kees Vanderheyden