MY STORY 4

FOOD and MEDICINE became more scarce as the the war-years rolled by. Food was rationed and certain medicine became totally unavailable. Just before the war my dad, in his younger years an outstanding athlete, and local fencing champion, began to show episodes of epilepsy. He would fall down and for several days stare into space, unable to remember even that he had children. He was greatly helped by medicine for this condition, which became unavailable during the war. This "curse" had, however a blessing attached to it. When the Germans went around picking up able bodied men to work in Germany in the war effort, dad simply pulled out his "handicap pass" and was excused every time.

We were all undernourished. With me it showed mostly in enormous sores on my toes. This happened mostly in what is now called the "hunger winter" I ended up in a wheel chair. In addition to having no food, we had no coal, no electricity, no natural gas. Because I could not walk I was given the assignment to construct little oil lamps out of tin cans. I still remember how! Once in a while the Germans knocked on the door to take our winter clothes, our blankets, all copper (to make ammunition), the bikes, the radios, and you name it. Dad stripped planks out of the attic to burn for heat in the pot-belly stove.

One night we sat around that stove singing hymns and choruses expressing our faith in God for help. The doorbell rang. We looked at each other, stunned. The Germans again? It turned out our aunt Maria in nurses uniform, on her bike, and balancing a large bag of whole grain. We got the old coffee grinder out and took turns grinding until we had enough for a bowl of porridge each. And the next day pancakes, or something like that.

We experienced an amazing life with God those days. How often when we were literally at the end of our resources, some "uitkomst" (unexpected solution) saved our lives. Not the least of which was for kids to be send to the farms way out in the north of the country.