( The letters have been slightly edited for brevity and relevance. )
Dear Mr. Kramer,
Well now Arthur,
I try my best in English.
I was born in 1967. Straubing has been grown at that time and I grew up at
the place I signed with the red point on your picture. You will find this
picture as a detached file to this mail. I still remember the damage your
bombs have done around the train station. At the beginning of the 80s the
last prints of the bombs has been cleaned up. But sometimes still streets
are close by construction works when they find by digging in the ground
blind bombs of the bomb raid.
In the early 90s I lived in Munich while I was studying at the Ludwigs
Maximilians Universität. Every weekend I went home to Straubing to meet my
family and my girl friend.
It was summer when I visited my Grandmother. We were sitting outside in the
garden – while she was telling her old stories I read the newspaper. After a
little while she told me about the “Amerikaner” and how she survived the
bomb raid. I stopped reading the newspaper and started to listen to her
story. It was not a fantastic story but when there would have been a bad end
I would have not been alive.
Here is her little life story:
In 1913 she was born in a little village about 10 miles outside of
Straubing. Her family was a poor farmer's family. Her mother has borne 17
babies. But at that time a lot of little children died because there were no
antibiotics on pneumonia. So in her family: 5 children died.
She grew up in the poor time of World War 1 by having no luxuries and
feeling hungry every day. It must haven been in the early 1920s when she
lost most of her possibility to hear. (I still don’t know the reason I have
never asked but I feel now that I have to ask my mother very soon about
this.)
14 years old she learned how to be a tailor. At the time she finished to
become a tailor it was very hard to find a job in Germany. So she did what
every people in Bavaria did when they were poor: She went from farm to farm
to work in the farmer’s family as a tailor as long as the work in the family
was done. She got paid very poor but at every farm she had a roof over her
had and something to eat. It must have been the late 1930s when she met the
man she married.
I remember her telling me stories about the voting and the Nazis. She had
tears in her eyes. She said she voted for Hitler because he promised a
better life. But not really a lot for her situation changed with Hitler and
she had not the possibility to inform herself because of her fight to
survive and her handicap in hearing.
She believed in Hitler until he has stolen her husband.
I also remember that we had only one TV in our family. It was in my
Grandmother’s room. I once went to her room to watch TV – I made her a
construction with a strong amplifier and a headset so she could manage to
follow the words. She was sitting in her room watching a documentation film
about Dachau while she was praying with tears in her eyes.)
With her husband she rented a little room. But they could not meet each
other very often because they had to go to work. She as a tailor every week
at another farm. He as a carpenter at other farms.
When 1939 the war started her husband had to go to the army. He was in the
6th Army (Do you know the story of the 6th Army in WW2?)
At the end of spring 1941 her husband - his name was Johann Singer – got
front vacation. He was stationed in Russia. And while the time he was at
home my Grandma got pregnant.
She still has to work a lot. End of December her husband was lucky to get
again vacation from the war. He was waiting to join the birth of my mother.
But on 2nd of January 1942 he has to go back to the front again. One day
later my mother was born. He has never seen his daughter. In January 1943 he
got missed in Stalingrad. He never came back again.
(If you will find information about the Germans and the Russians fighting in
Stalingrad you will stop to ask what missed in action means at that time. To
be honest I believe that he was butchered by the Russians.)
My mother has never seen her Daddy and the Daddy had never seen his
daughter. But there are letters from him out of Stalingrad. By reading that
letters I started to cry myself: They had nothing to eat at Stalingrad but
my Grandfather sent a little piece of chocolate to my baby mother. He wrote
in the letter how he joins to imagine my mother by eating this piece of
chocolate with all the brown color around her mouth.
My Grandma still believed that her husband will be found alive one day. But
while having a baby she had to change her life. It was no longer possible
for her to move from one farm to another. So she shared the a little room
with her sister Lea in Straubing. Now she tried to find work in Straubing by
families to make their tailor work. It was not easy for her because it was
very hard for her to hear.
So in April 1945 she was working at a family which has a house next to the
train station. She was lucky to take her little daughter with her. While she
was sewing the little daughter was playing at the floor.
On April the 20th she was doing her work. Because she was not able to hear she could not hear
the siren, which tells that the bombers are coming. And nobody remembers her
working at the house. So she was still working while the first bombs were
falling. When the house got the first shakes of the bomb explosions she got
very frightened. But she could manage to fetch her little daughter and find
a way out of this house. She runs between the bomb explosions with her
little daughter in front of her chest for her life. And she made it. By
knowing my Grandma I am sure that she would have made all just to survive.
Soon the war was over after the bomb raid over Straubing – and the Americans
for the poorer people had been very welcome. The GIs occupied Straubing.
And hunger and fear starts to be over. But at the next years after the war
it was still a hard fight for life for my mother and Grandma.
First things my mother remembers about the GIs was fear. She has never
seen colored people. BUT: They throw chocolate out of their tanks and Jeeps.
And so the little kid after a little while went very lucky by seeing
American soldiers. They also brought food to the schools.
At the time the Americans are still loved by the Germans because of the help
they brought to them.
I have been to the USA for vacation after I graduated from school in 1987. I
met a man in my age in Oklahoma. We got friends. One year later he came over
the ocean to visit me in Germany. My Grandma was full of luck to meet a real
American. She also was full of thanks to your nation. So my mother. You
brought them peace and help in very hard times.
And the life of my Grandma? It was going on for her to be hard. She got a
bad tumor spinal column in 1966. She made it also the doctors said: no
chance. Later she got hard rheumatism and gout. She made it.
In the 1980s she got poisoned by medicine in a hospital. She made it.
1987 I had to be a soldier at the German Army for 15 months. I had been a
“Gebirgsjäger” that’s a soldier in the mountains. My Grandmother always was
in worry about me. She always was in fear that I once have to go to war. But
for God's thank there was no war at that time. With all her worries about me
she made it.
Some years later she went blind. No problem for her.
All the way she joined life very lucky. She never thought about dying. She
was waiting for every new day what it will bring funny and lucky things. She
was too lucky with life and too curious what in life was still waiting for
her.
But every people have a repertoire of power. And once it is used up. She
used that repertoire more than up by having no pity for her self and waiting
positively on every new day. I still miss her with all the power she has.
That’s the little story I had to think about by finding that old picture in
the internet. Not a very exciting story – but it’s my story which holds me
from sleeping the last night.
Now it’s late in the evening here in Straubing. This mail took me nearly 2
hours. But to find sleep this night I had to do it today also I am very
tired.
I hope you got not bored with this mail.
Greetings from Straubing
Andi
Copyright © 2004 Art Kramer and Coastal Computers, Inc.
