02:24

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-06-17

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1927

Underground schools and too many children Interestingly, it was really nice of my mother, she once tried to learn Italian. But one day she came home and said: "No, I won’t learn that language, a language, where such a beautiful flower as the carnation is called garofano, no, I won’t continue studying that." And then she - in these schools, what were they called these underground schools- she taught German in the 'catacomb' schools. Well, that's how it was, we had a board game on the table. When someone came in, we had to put the exercise books into the drawer immediately and had to play the game. She still got arrested three times, and had to be released again, because she was pregnant every time. So they let her go. She had taught in old Austria still, in Gfrill for example, I’ve still got a photo, I must show it to you. All the kids in one class, I think it was around 30 pupils. All the classes together, like it used to be in the villages. She also met my father there, and so they married there. My father was the youngest of 16 children. My grandparents on my father’s side had 16 kids. Only eight of them grew to adulthood, and the oldest one inherited everything, a massive farm, a farm with lots of forest and land and a vinyard down in the valley. The oldest inherited everything. And my father was the youngest, he got nothing of course. Still, we managed to live.