Farewell to East Prussia by Erhard Schulz

Author:Erhard Schulz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Books on Demand
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t recall much of my last summer vacation in Rehwalde. The people were gravely concerned about their relatives. The Russian front was coming closer even more. Even the simplest things for daily life weren’t available anymore. For instance, we urgently needed replacement dishes since last winter.

Mom didn’t know where to get jugs or drinking cups to put on the table. Dad packed one of our last plucked Christmas geese into a wicker basket and covered the bird with towels. Then he put his winter fur coat on top and drove to Kuckerneese with the milk cart.

He came back with three new enamel cups. They were all different, but they served their purpose. At first, the seller in the shop there, an elderly gentleman, had told my dad that he didn’t have anything for sale anymore. Dad put the wicker basket on the table, pretending that the basket had become too heavy for him. Then he proposed to look in the supply room, maybe there was still something left. Saying this, he slightly moved the towels off the basket as if unintentionally, so that a piece of the goose neck and head showed. Upon that, the old man took my dad into the back room.

This case may have been an exception and not the norm. Maybe the seller fetched the cups from his private stock. Trading three metal cups for a fat goose would have been a good deal for a city dweller, who only got meager rations of meat and fat surrogate on food-cards.

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.