02:57

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

St. Anton

2008-08-19

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

1939

We - I actually - or all of us - all of us children experienced something of the war. I remember that almost every year we received - because the house is old - we are entitled to wood. So, every year we are assigned about 12 cubic metres of wood. The amount you're entitled to depends on how many cattle you have. We had to fell the trees ourselves. Our plot of forest was up at Schöngraben, we called it Schian; it was part of the Stöck property. My father was at our plot that day. The day the war broke out. That same day. And we ? we had to bring him his lunch and on that same day - we - we heard it at noon. "Now the war has started ? in Poland." The radio also said: "The horses are up to their knees in blood." We did hear about that. We went up to our father and told him about it. He had been a prisoner in Russia for four years and he said: "It will be a long one." That's all he said. When I think about it, I still regret that we didn't ask him more at the time. He surely would have had a lot of stories to tell. He was in Irkutsk. That's somewhere far behind the Ural mountains somewhere in Siberia. Four years. Yes. - - -