The Hunger Year - 1944

It's scary how much recent memory has been damaged by the pneumonia. I can remember the past but I can't remember how to access my blog. I'm told that both my physical strength and my mental activity will improve. Since I'm trapped in my past for now, I'll revisit it tonight.

1944 - The Hunger Year.
Germany was losing the war, and enduring hardships in the homeland. This was also very stressful for the occupied countries because the Germans were taking our food, livestock, natural resources and our men to keep German production going and the German people fed.

People in the cities of Holland were starving, as well as freezing because of the intensely cold winter. This was the period that produced those photos of starving children and the dead lying in the streets. It was also the year many farmers grew wealthy. Hunger drove people to the outlying farms to trade whatever they had for three eggs or a half pound of butter, a scrap of meat or whatever else their gold rings, family silver, or baby's Christening cup could purchase. These opportunistic farmers hoarded the booty they had acquired from their desperate urban cousins and cashed it in after the war. War brings out the very worst in some people.

Years later when we drove through the countryside and my aunts spotted a particularly prosperous farm, they would hiss with contempt. They had made the trek out to some of these farms themselves, on foot (all the bicycles had been seized by the Germans), to barter for food for the family. They remembered with humiliation trading fine embroidered sheets and table linens for a small loaf of bread and a meager slab of cheese.

My parents were a young couple who loved to entertaining. They would get together for Bridge and dinner periodically. Dinners were lavish feasts that rotated from one home to the next. They competed to see who could prepare the most original and sumptuous meal. But how was that possible with no food available? My mother and her friends had saved women' s magazines from before the war. They clipped photographs of food and recipes and set them out on the dinner table, everyone would gather around and comment on the delicious meal. They laughed and talked and kept their spirits up at their imaginary dinner parties and then rush home before curfew.

I can still remember how being deeply hungry felt. I remember asking for a piece of bread once and being told there was none. To this day, I always like to keep a well stocked kitchen so that nobody has to go away hungry. I never take food for granted, ever. It is a profound gift and I'm grateful for it.