Old Memories Return
When Dr. Horn showed us a picture of one of the French boxcars that were crammed full of Jewish women and children, and some men as well, to be transported to Auschwitz, a memory came back to me from so many years ago. My Dad was stationed in France at the end of WWII, and he'd told me he was a member of the Forty and Eight by virtue of having traveled on one of the French boxcars so designated, as they were designed to haul forty men or eight horses. He never mentioned the use of those boxcars during the Holocaust; I doubt he knew of that horror until after he came back to the States.
I was 8 or 9 by the time he came home. Later, he would tell me stories about his time first as a typist/clerk and then as an MP. He said they would get so bored during many hours of night duty that one of them would go down to a local pub and start a mild ruckus. The bartender would call the MPs and they'd get to rush down to the pub and arrest the fellow, getting out of the stuffy office and into the cool night air, and getting a whiff of the nightlife.
I remember only too well the day he came home. My brother John and I had gone to the local movie theatre, an all-day adventure on a Saturday when you could watch a newsreel, a chapter in a serial, two feature movies, maybe even a stage show of the local dance studio kids, and cartoons--all this for twenty-five cents each. A nickel bought each of us a box of Jujubes. Our baby sister was at home; we all lived in a very large boardinghouse full of wives and children of men serving overseas, a place of lots of laughter and many, many tears.
At any rate, my brother and I rode our imaginary horses home from the movies and rushed into the house. Mother looked peculiar; her color was high, her eyes big and shiny. "He's home!" I hollered, "Daddy's home!" Sure enough, the door from the basement opened and there he was, grinning to beat the band, hugging me and then swinging me around with such joy. We heard a sound out in the hallway...my baby sister had heard me, and was bounding down the stairs. When she saw our Dad, she whooped and simply did a complete leap down the bottom half of those stairs! Daddy always said it frightened him, her complete trust that her Daddy would catch her. And of course he did.
I was 8 or 9 by the time he came home. Later, he would tell me stories about his time first as a typist/clerk and then as an MP. He said they would get so bored during many hours of night duty that one of them would go down to a local pub and start a mild ruckus. The bartender would call the MPs and they'd get to rush down to the pub and arrest the fellow, getting out of the stuffy office and into the cool night air, and getting a whiff of the nightlife.
I remember only too well the day he came home. My brother John and I had gone to the local movie theatre, an all-day adventure on a Saturday when you could watch a newsreel, a chapter in a serial, two feature movies, maybe even a stage show of the local dance studio kids, and cartoons--all this for twenty-five cents each. A nickel bought each of us a box of Jujubes. Our baby sister was at home; we all lived in a very large boardinghouse full of wives and children of men serving overseas, a place of lots of laughter and many, many tears.
At any rate, my brother and I rode our imaginary horses home from the movies and rushed into the house. Mother looked peculiar; her color was high, her eyes big and shiny. "He's home!" I hollered, "Daddy's home!" Sure enough, the door from the basement opened and there he was, grinning to beat the band, hugging me and then swinging me around with such joy. We heard a sound out in the hallway...my baby sister had heard me, and was bounding down the stairs. When she saw our Dad, she whooped and simply did a complete leap down the bottom half of those stairs! Daddy always said it frightened him, her complete trust that her Daddy would catch her. And of course he did.
posted by Marion | 9:13 PM
4 Comments:
What a great story and such beautiful imagery. I was really there with you galloping home to find your Mother happy and your Father home.
Thank you for sharing this personal side of such tragic times.
Oh what beautiful memories. I recently asked Shannon's grandmother where she was and what she was doing when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and she couldn't remember. I'm fascinated by WWII stories.
Thanks for your comments; some of my memories of those days are crystal clear. Whenever you would walk into someone's home, the radio would be on and Roosevelt's voice would usually be the one you heard. We were ALL so supportive of the war effort and everyone in our DC neighborhood had a small vegetable garden in the back yard, called Victory Gardens, to free up store-bought veggies for the troops.
Who can forget those big bags of white margarine with a yellow/orange capsule of coloring that you mashed and squished until the stuff looked like butter? Or taking the bottoms off tin cans and stepping on them until they were flat, so we could haul them to the junk yard for pennies? Somehow, this was to help the war effort. And stacks of newspapers hauled to school?
My dad was among those who liberated Buchenwald at the age of 19. It ruined him and we grew up being educated about the holocaust from day one. To this day I can't look at a holocaust scene without falling apart. Thinking about what was done but also looking at it from my dad's young eyes and hurting for him.
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