Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Lienz

2008-05-06

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

I have nice memories of my father. He worked with the railroad company and he had a bike. He always went to work on that bike. On the back there was a carrier, like there used to be. And he picked up every piece of wood, every single piece, that he found lying on the ground on his way and put it on the carrier at the back. He brought it all home, every single piece. And when he got home - there was no proper food on the table. Then we bought a tin of sardines, I remember that well, a tin of sardines, a longish one. Then all of us, three, four, five - whoever was home - walked around father and said: "Let us have a taste!" and he gave everybody some until the can was almost empty. And then he - the old ovens had a kind of bowl inside them, a bowl for water. So he poured the water from the water bowl into a cup, added soup flavouring and bread and water with soup flavouring was his supper, after work. I will never forget that. He was a very kind-hearted person, but he didn't grow old. As I said, we built the house together. We helped him as well as we could and he did everything else himself. And your mother, what was your mother like? My mother was a very petite woman and I must say she was rather energetic. That's the way it has to be - it has to be. She didn't waste many words when we were bad, when we - she didn't say a lot. She only said: "Will you be quiet!" Back there in the corner with the crucifix, there used to be a small birch switch and she would take it down, swish, and she would wave it above our heads, crack! And then all of us knew what that meant: be quiet, and that's it! In the mornings we had to - during the war we didn't have any shoes - one of us went to church and back home again, then another one put those ... shoes on so that he could go to church too. We didn't have anything, nothing. To eat we had: In the mornings we had watery soup, so we ate soup. In the evenings there was a pot full of potatoes - not peeled - in front of the house. So we ate potatoes. For lunch we often had dumplings, a soup with noodles. So... really pathetic.