Tragedies Through History: Experiencing World War II as a Child

Flashback Friday:  Waldi Gault Experiencing Live as a Child During WWII

Nancy Stearns Theiss

(The image shows Waldi as a baby with her sister, Reiner,  and mother, Sabina)

The Corona Virus reminds us that through humanity in the world we are all connected and no matter how isolated we think we are from others in the world, we are connected ecologically- good or bad. This is an interesting time in history but not so unusual when I look back in our archives and think about our oral histories from people that went through tougher times.  This is from one of my favorite oral history interviews in our Living Treasures Oral History Program.  I loved Waldi Gault’s remembrances as a child and the strength of her family and resilience through a time when some 75 million people died including military personnel, civilians, and deliberate genocide.  The following is her story:

I am born of German descent in a place very few people have ever heard of, in the town of Eger in the Sudetenland, in Bohemia.  Today, the town is called Cheb and in the Czech Republic. I became an American citizen in 1970 in Chicago.

Eger was one of the oldest and most prosperous cities.  It is first mentioned in 1061 when it was founded by Celtic tribes. The Slavs who arrived from Central Asia built a walled city in 1125 as a fortress. Its ruins still stand today and served us as a bomb shelter during the war.  Throughout the centuries, many ethnic groups lived there. There were Germans, Austrians, Slovaks, Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, Poles, Catholics, Protestants, and believers in the Christian Orthodox faith.  They kept their separate identities despite mixed marriages, personal friendships, and business connections.

When my ancestors were born in Eger, it was then the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy which was created in 1867.  My grandparents were poor but hard working people.  My grandfather was a stone mason.  It was still the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy when my mother was born in 1912 in Eger.  The area around Eger became known for its mineral springs.  Royalty as well as wealthy and famous people from around the world came to enjoy the healing waters.  Beautiful resorts similar to French Lick and West Baden in Indiana are still there today.

The local people found springs emerging in fields and meadows.  My grandmother and mother, who was the youngest of 5 children, delivered mineral water to the wealthy people in town which meant getting up at 3 am before school, to have the bottles filled and at the door of the privileged when they got up.  That daily effort over several years enabled them to buy a beautiful home.

M mother worked at a printing press and saved her money for her dowry that included every piece of furniture to furnish our home before she married my father in 1939.  As you’ll see later, she lost it all in one hour.

But times and the country had changed.  In 1918, after WWI, when Germany lost the war, the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy fell apart, and Eger, my hometown, and Bohemia came under rule in the newly founded country which was Czechoslovakia, and came under Czech authority.  Today it is the Czech Republic.

Acording to my mother, life was still going on as usual.  I remember her talking about her happy school years, her performances on stage, she loved gymnastics, hiking and skiing with friends.

In the 1930’s social unrest was emerging. As we were under the Czech rule, many Germans fought for independence and self-control. My father was drafted into the Czech army in 1933 and 34 when Czechoslovakia was mobilizing and fought in Poland against the Germans. In 1940 he fought against France.

The hardest question for the Czech government was how to incorporate three million ethnic Germans who were concentrated in the Sudetenland.   In February, 1938, Hitler in a speech promised the Germans (under Czech rule) to bring them back into the “Reich.”  It was a major threat to Czechoslovakia when Hitler entered Austria and later the Sudetenland.  As Hitler became more aggressive, the Czech government, in 1944 proposed to expel the Germans.  It was hoping that the U.S., England, and Russia would take the Germans in.  But there were no offers.  In 1945, Germans were lynched, shot, or beaten to death. Germans had to wear armbands for identification.  I remember my mother wearing an armband.

In 1941 I was born and World War II had started.  But all I remember was our home and my grandparents living upstairs. I remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap when he peeled apples for me.  He always had rabbits in our yard and I loved petting them.  I remember going to the park with my mother and new brother who is 2 years younger.

And soon, everything changed . .

That is when the bombs began to fall.  We were told to cover all windows and doors with tar paper so no light could escape and tell the enemy that there were people below.  But they found us anyway, because soon after we heard the sound of the sirens (I can still hear them today), we, the children, the old and the women rushed through the dark streets to the fortress to hide in its underground tunnels.  We heard the approaching planes and saw bombs dropping from the sky as we all ran.  I remember the narrow passages with water dripping from the dirt ceiling, wooden benches and a light bulb here and there to show us the way.  We had to wait until it was all clear before we could return home.  But often, we had to return a second time.  I suffered from whooping cough but there was no doctor for Germans and no medication. I ended up with a hole in my lung as a result.  We also had to practice wearing gas masks.  That hole in my lung, later in my adult life, led to breast cancer.

The next day, I remember walking through town with my mother, looking at all the damage the bombs had done; houses in rubble, the train station was gone, people crying.  But I don’t remember ever crying myself.  I am sure I did not understand what was going on at age 4 or 5.

I remember walking for 8 miles each way with my mother and my brother in the baby carriage to the border of Germany.  Very few people had cars then. There my mother met acquaintances to whom she passed on sheets, blankets, towels, etc. in case we were evacuated and that way we had something on the other side of the border to keep us going.  This was possible for a short time, but soon it became more difficult. My mother and two aunts walked to the border at night, when there was a curfew. They had big baskets on their backs and put rags on their shoes not to make any sound. They had to cross dark forests to reach the border which was patrolled by Czech police.  My mother told me how they were lying in the snow, barely breathing with their weights on their backs, hoping that they would not be seen.  At least twice they had guns on them and were taken captive.  They had to wash windows in prison.  My grandmother was worried when they had not returned in the morning.  She had to go to jail and bail them out.  But that did not deter the women.  The women were so strong, they were unbelievable.

One day, my mother and I were visiting an aunt in town, when a neighbor came running to tell us that the Czech police had entered our home and threw my grandfather who was 80 and ailing, out of bed and into the street.  We were told by the police to evacuate our home within one hour.  My mother and grandmother were allowed to take a few items, like the feather beds.  I still remember the seal the Czech police affixed to our front door.  We were never again allowed into our house.  At the same time, they also confiscated our beautiful garden outside of town, where we had a weekend cottage.

Fortunately, my father’s family owned a larger corner house not far from our house.  They offered us, my grandparents, my mother, my brother and me, one room on the 2^nd floor.  The next day, trucks came by loaded with all our belongings. I remember my mother looking down and seeing it, those open trucks with all her things in it.  It was so difficult to watch for my mother who had labored and saved for years to have a nice home.  She never got over it.

I remember my grandfather dying in that room with all of us present.  I remember my mother finding food for us to eat.  Again, there were only old people, mothers and children around.  The men were fighting the war or had died in the war.  The women went into the fields collecting grains that the farmers’ machines dropped during the harvest.  There were chased by the farmers’ dogs. The women came home with small bags of grains.  I remember roasting the grains in open skillets and then grinding them in coffee grinders.  We had “coffee” and then saved the grounds to make cakes with them. I don’t remember how they got the cakes to stick together- maybe they had an egg- I don’t know. I also remember grinding acorns and with a little grease browning them.  I assume we added a little sugar if we had any.  I remember this because I was already able to help in my small ways.  We also ate a lot of oatmeal soup.  We were totally starved.  I remember even later, when we lived in West Germany,  I had a slice of brown bread with margarine on it and took tiny bites from one hole to the next, to make it last!

Soon the rumors started that we would be evacuated from Eger.  We could be shipped east to Russia, or to the west, to Germany.  It was a frightening time.  My mother wanted to make sure that I was a least out of harm’s way and arranged for me to cross the border (to Germany) with an aunt.

I remember that border crossing as if it were today.  I wore as many clothes as possible as I was not allowed to carry any luggage.  I carried an umbrella as it was raining, and my doll. I don’t remember saying good-bye to my mother, only that she told me to ignore the Czech police and just keep on walking, which we did.  I was five years old.  I had always wondered how we could cross without incident.  Not long ago I talked to my cousin who is the daughter of the aunt I crossed the border with and she said that her father “knew” some Czechs and would know when it was “best” or okay to cross the border.   My mother said the guards would talk to me in Czech and tell me to stop but I should act like I didn’t know Czech and just keep on walking through the border.

At this point, I wish my doll could talk and tell me what happened next.  (I still have the doll- that was the only thing I had to carry with me.  It is now with my granddaughters). There is a long time (many months) of no memory.  I ended up in Germany with another aunt. After I left, they loaded up the Germans in our town, in cattle cars (my mother, grandmother and younger brother included) they were stuffed in there, no bathrooms, just straw, and some people died, but thank God they were shipped to West Germany.  They could have gone to Russia and never heard of again. Very similar to the horrible concentration camps the Jews went to.  Fortunately they were only there for a few months.  My aunt, in Germany, got papers together and was able to come and get them from the camp and take them to her home in Germany.

Later on I met up again with my mother, brother and grandmother.  My father eventually came back from the war.  He fought in France and ended up in an American Prison of War camp.  He had survived eating grass and bark and none of us recognized him when we first saw him.  At least, we were all together again.  We were now in Germany.

We started out in one room with a bed, a table, and chairs and very slowly life improved.  Soon I had another brother, my father found work with the railroad, and even though, we were Germans, we were always looked upon as the lower class, as dirty refugees.  A lot of Germans were uneducated and didn’t really know who we were or where we came from- they just knew we were refugees.

I loved school and learning.  My parents understood that education was the key to a better life, but you needed money for higher education, which we did not have.  Very few people at that time had a college degree. I graduated at the age of sixteen from a secretarial school and was working as the only accountant in a German company.

And that is when I wondered, “Is that all there is to life?”  During that time, a friend heard about the “au pair” program in England.  Au pair means that you are a live-in nanny, taking care of the children. I became an au pair at the age of 17 in England.  I was always in contact with my parents through letters. We did not have a telephone at that time.  It was really hard when I left Germany. It was a small community that I left but I convinced my parents that I had to leave. Growing up in such a small town, there was nothing to do.  As teenagers, we walked back and forth and back and forth in town. We had a movie theatre but no money to see the movies. To go to my school, I had to catch a train because the school was 30 miles away. When I went to London, my parents were able to give me a return ticket, just in case.  My mother asked me how I could do this but she also understood my needs.  I will always be grateful for my parents’ support.

In my case, (when I went to London) I lived with a medical doctor, his wife and their three children in a London suburb.  I had one day off every week when I attended classes to perfect my English.  But the major benefit was that the experience opened my eyes to another culture and country.  I received pocket money and was treated like a member of the family.  Because London was such a great experience and adventure for me, I decided to try the same program in France.

I arrived in Paris when I was eighteen years old.  I fell in love with the city and the French people.  Again, I was treated wonderfully and even today, I am still in touch with the children I took care of long ago.  After about a year, my knowledge of the French language, in addition to the English language, enabled me to get a job in Munich, Germany, at the Institute for the Study of the USSR which was supported by American funds.

In 1964, my French family invited me to spend my vacation with them in France.  I was delighted.  My love for Paris was still there and I decided to stay if I could find a job.  I found a newspaper ad for an American company, was interviewed and hired again because of my knowledge of languages.  I ran the export department.

And that is where I met my husband who worked for the same company, but was based in London.  We dated in Paris and the same year were married in London. That was almost 49 years ago!  When I got pregnant, my husband wanted our baby to be born in the United States.  We came back to a suburb of Chicago.  Our daughter, and two years later, our son, were born there.

While I was busy raising two children, I felt a need once more to further my education.  I found out that I could take correspondence courses at the University of Illinois and study at home.  I began with English literature, Creative Writing, and Russian (to build on former studies I had done).  I loved it.  I also discovered Montessori education (early childhood education) and used the methods in the home. Eventually, our children attended the Montessori Schools in Chicago and later here, in Louisville.

In 1972, my husband was asked by his brother to join him in a company he had started in Eminence, Kentucky, in financial and accounting work. My husband has an MBA from Northwestern and that was a perfect fit.

Well, we finally arrived here in beautiful Oldham County. What a change form Chicago! We loved it here on our very first visit. LaGrange was so small. I remember Ben Franklin on Main Street; there was a butcher, a drugstore, a grocery store and a hardware store.  There was also one restaurant: The Belle of LaGrange.  Interstate 71 was still new with hardly any traffic.

As a family, we immediately embraced the beauty of Oldham County, the pastoral setting. A farm behind our house had horses and cows. The children could not wait to come home from school and feed carrots to the horses. Our children were the perfect age to explore our creek looking for tadpoles and fossils.  They camped out, picked blackberries, built a tree house, the same activities our grandchildren now enjoy.

When the children were in school all day, I started to take classes at the University of Louisville.  I had been fascinated by the way our children learned from the time they were babies. This observation made me want to become a teacher.  After ten years mostly a part time schedule of classes at the University of Louisville, I earned by BA in Elementary Education.  I was hired as a teacher at St. Francis in Goshen. After three more years, I received my Masters in Gifted Education.  I taught ten years at St. Francis.  At the same time, our children went through the Oldham County public school system and eventually our daughter became a medical doctor and our son a lawyer.

My life has taken me many different and unusual paths.  My early childhood taught me that I can survive hardships, that children are resilient.  It made ma a stronger, self-reliant person. It also taught me that we are responsible for the choices we make. Even though my parents did not have the money to offer me the best education, they drilled into me that education is most important and nobody can take it from you.  We instilled that also in our children.

In 1945 and 1946, Communism came to the Czech Republic.  The Iron Curtain soon after closed off Eastern Europe from the rest of the world.  But in 1989, the “Wall” came down and my parents were allowed for the first time to return to their cherished homeland.  I was able to revisit the Czech Republic as an adult with my parents.  In my return, I realized how far I had come.  It was a tearful and emotional trip.  The house where I grew up, was demolished.  My father’s house, where we were taken in after we lost everything, was still there and so were the ruins of the old fortress. We tried to find our garden with the weekend cottage, but there were now fields of wheat. The spring where my grandmother and mother filled thousands of bottles with mineral water, was still running.  The church was still there where I was baptized.  We were a Catholic family.  When you had a baptism, back then, you rented a carriage with white horses to carry you to the church- it was a local custom.

When we went back to Eger, we also visited our family cemetery, but the graves were taken over by the Czechs.  The custom for burial there, as well as West Germany, is to bury family members, in wooden caskets, no embalming, on top of each other because there is lack of space.  Our family graves had been totally taken over by the Czechs and their family graves.  There was no trace of the graves where our family had been buried.

I mentioned that I had breast cancer a few years ago. My radiation oncologist believes that it originated from the hole in my lung from whooping cough as a child. My parents sent me to a home in the mountains several times after the war, when I was a child, to help heal the hole in my lung. The cure consisted of living in the clean mountain air, sleep with open windows even with snow on the ground, eat good food, and relaxation.  It actually helped me and the hole closed.  The many fluoroscopes (instead of X-rays) the doctors used back then to check my lungs continuously, gave me a large dose of radiation that eventually caused my cancer.

You know this is my story and I have talked to other Germans and they have no knowledge of what my family and Germans from the Czech region went through.  When I came to the United States, I was so grateful to be here and live in a place that has opportunities and allowed me to get my college degrees later in life.  The American people are very friendly and welcoming.  My mother later in her life, would come every summer and spend two months with us, even in her 80’s.  She especially loved the many hugs she got.  Germans do not hug unless you are a relative.  Even though she did not speak one word of English, she felt the love of the American people towards her.