The Children's War by Peter Bodo Gawenda

Author:Peter Bodo Gawenda [Gawenda, Peter Bodo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, World War II, Coming of Age, Family Life, Siblings
ISBN: 9781612549026
Google: FHXnDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: BrownBooks.ORM
Published: 2010-11-08T00:38:08+00:00

A Portrait: Oma Klara Gawenda

Oma was the one to tell us that you can cope with anything and that you can overcome everything, even the biggest loss or biggest setback. Years after the loss of her husband, she still used those words in one of her letters to Mother. She lost her firstborn son to pneumonia when he was eight, then her daughter, who died in childbirth, and in World War II, her husband and her status in life. She never saw her surviving son, my father, again, nor us, his family, after we fled our home, but she coped until her death.

Oma helped her relatives by giving up the little food she received to younger ones so they would be able to survive. She died very peacefully, talking about everyone she had lost and those she could no longer be with, and strangely, she asked Opa’s cousin, should she ever see us, to give her apologies to us for not having been able to be the grandmother she wanted to be and we might have wanted her to be.

Oma Gawenda was a very loving and caring lady, and we loved her dearly. In later years, we often wished that we could have grown up with our Gleiwitz grandparents. Oma was regarded very highly and respected by all who lived around her. She gave us more hugs and kisses than Mother, Father, Father’s father, and the grandparents in Oberglogau put together. She always had encouraging words for us, and sometimes when she passed me, she would bend down and whisper into my left ear, “Peter, you are one of my little angels.” Then she would kiss me on my cheek and hug me so hard that I couldn’t breathe, just like Maria. Maybe it was the custom of the people that Oma and Maria came from.

When the Poles occupied Gleiwitz in 1945, Oma imme-diately lost the apartment. She could not take anything of hers from the residence. Oma, who had Polish citizenship, had to serve as a cleaning woman for a Polish family that was assigned to her apartment.

Oma lived until 1960, never having been permitted to go to West Germany to visit her son and his family. Her son, our father, was never permitted to visit his mother in Upper Silesia. Soon, the Iron Curtain separated not only two Germanys but all Western countries from the Soviet-controlled bloc and the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.