My Dad's Story: Lithuania to Bavaria: Part 5
I asked my dad how his family went all the way from Lithuania to Bavaria in Germany during World War II. He's telling me the story in installments. I thought that some of you might find this story interesting. Here's part 5.
During the final days of the war a severe food shortage developed in Munich. It had been growing for months because it could only be shipped at night, which was hazardous for a couple of reasons. First, roads and bridges were damaged by air attack, and second, the weather was either snowy or rainy. There were many buildings that were severely damaged and partially collapsed due to air attacks, in fact I don't think there was any intact building in the whole city. So people took to rummaging through these damaged buildings and gathering canned food and other things like bread if they were still edible. Some partially collapsed buildings couldn't be entered by adults because collapsed floors and/or walls blocked all doorways and windows. However, a skinny four-year old could squeeze through gaps in the collapsed walls or floors and get into the building. That became my job. I took a cloth bag and filled it up with as much edible stuff as I could. If there was still food left in the building I would make additional trips. The best place to look was of course the kitchen and any pantry which was connected to it. In one kitchen I found something unexpected, a man sitting in a chair with a bullet hole in his temple. Apparently he found he was trapped and couldn't face the prospect of slowly starving to death so he took the quick way out.
When the war ended we thought the food crisis would be over because now trucks could move during daylight. But the occupying forces announced that the German currency, the Reichsmark, was no longer valid and would be replaced by the Deutschmark. But the new currency wouldn't be available for several weeks while it was being printed and distributed. The result: starvation! Why? Because the farmers wouldn't ship food unless they were paid for it. If you remember the famine in Ethiopia some years ago, where the news shows were showing pictures of children that were just skin and bones. That's what I looked like, except my skin was a lighter hue.
People still needed to exchange things and so needed something to serve as currency. It seemed at this time that nearly everyone smoked. So cigarettes became the new currency and prices were quoted for all sorts of things in terms of cigarettes.
The one bright thing that happened at this time was my father suddenly showed up. I don't know how he found us. As I said, he was in the German air force doing ground maintenance. By the end of September, 1944 for all intents and purposes the German Air Force was no more. So he and the other ground maintenance personnel were ordered to go across France removing the wires from the high voltage electric transmission towers. The wires then were shipped to Germany and melted down for the copper. While he was doing this he was captured by the Canadians near the North Sea coast. The Canadians were sure he was German and prepared to ship him off to a P.O.W. camp in Saskatchewan! My father spoke four languages, but none of them was English and so he had a helluva time convincing the Canadians that he wasn't German but Lithuanian. When he did they let him go and he found his way to Munich.
To keep me alive my parents started feeding me raw eggs and beer. This was because these were still available. Regardless of peace or war, chickens keep laying eggs and they don't keep for very long, so the local farmers kept bringing them into the city and trading them for things they needed or cigarettes. And apparently there was so much beer in Munich that it was still readily available. But I didn't like it because to my four-year old palate the beer tasted very bitter. So my parents thought adding sugar might make me drink it. Adding sugar to beer causes a chemical reaction which turns the beer to foam. If you want to try it as an experiment, I suggest doing it over a sink. I thought that was the neatest thing. So I ate the foam and ate the eggs and demanded more, just for the show. The effect of the starvation on me was it stunted my growth and I developed rickets. I know it's hard to believe my growth was stunted since I'm not exactly small. But there are a couple pieces of evidence. First, I'm smaller than my father, whereas at that time kids would grow larger than their parents. Second, my Lithuanian contemporaries are about 6' 3" and weigh 225 lbs.; when I was fully grown I was 6' 0" and 190 lbs.
When the war ended the American army was still to the west. It only showed up in Munich a couple of weeks after the war ended and occupied what had been a German army base outside the city. At first the GIs acted like tourists, going everywhere and sightseeing. And everywhere the GIs went there were cigarette butts. It became the kids' job to pick up all the butts and take them home to our parents. Cigarettes didn't have filters then, it was tobacco end-to-end. So our parents would remove the charred tobacco and would roll the remaining tobacco into new cigarettes (I don't know where they got the cigarette paper); it was like printing money! The US Army wouldn't let adults on their base without a pass, but they didn't seem to mind us kids going there. Talk about butt heaven! We kids scoured the place clean. That's probably why the GIs didn't mind us kids being on base, because if we didn't clean it up they would have to, and that wasn't their favorite duty.
The next installment will cover June, 1945.