Eiderstedt III

     Another problem we had , was lack of electricity. If I remember correctly, we had light two hours in the evening and two hours in the morning, I think each starting at six o'clock so that people could prepare breakfast or supper. Sometime in the middle of the night they turned on the electricity again, thinking we would all be in bed sleeping anyway. This was, of course, the time of all illegal activities, such as slaughtering a pig which entailed sausage making, cutting up the meat into the proper pieces, chops etc. and kept the whole family busy for the entire night.  Ever since the beginning  of the war complete blackout was the law. In the city it had meant- no more street lights or using a flashlight to point the path underfoot. At least this was the rule in Hamburg and other northern cities. In Breslau they had installed some sort of pale blue light and it was possible to recognize people in the street at night. So when I wound my way to my destination in the sparsely populated area I could always tell if someone was up and around. Somewhere , from one of the windows, there might be a tiny crack of light which did not belong. Clearly, it was from a kitchen -and I knew where all the kitchens were- that would be legitimate because everybody, small farmer or homesteader, might be up and ready to milk.This lack of light was not only a nuisance to law-abiding citizens but disastrous for those of us who wanted to listen to the forbidden broadcasts such as Radio Moskau, London, Luxembourg and Andorra. Luckily we had a post-master who was a) not a Nazi and b) very courageous.Just before noon, if one watched him, which at that time nobody did because it was time to prepare meals to feed the family, one could see him crossing the field on which the transformer, of which he was in charge, stood. Those of us, who knew of his activity, were already hunkered around the radio to listen to the latest reports of the front. For example, the citizens of Breslau, where I had studied for a year, had made the naive decision to fight the Russians with pitiful ancient weapons they had found in old closets. There were no more men around, just boys and grandfathers. Able-bodied men were either on the front, in Russian prison-camps or dead. On Radio Moskau we could follow the advance of the  Russians block by block even the one on which I had lived. I must confess, I felt quite hardened thinking about the population there.
        Somebody recently asked me how I felt when I was young. This is navel-contemplating time for many young and not so young people, specially the ones who are experiencing their mid-life crisis. I obviously do not wish anything we had to go through on anybody but have a hard time  identifying with all these emotions and then be told, sometimes self-righteously.that we suppressed our emotions.And it is true, we did not have the luxury to display our fears or other anxieties. Everybody had reasons to worry- about a husband, father or brother at the front or lost. Just a few problems we dealt with every day and night.
        So here we were in the winter of '44-'45. freezing and trying to stay sane, forget about warm, just snuggle into a cozy armchair and read?. My mother and I had tried to make some candles with some was we had found at the beach but did not have the right material for the wicks. An old Frisian woman had taught my mother to spin. While she was spinning, the wool on her lap, which kept her somewhat warm , I would read to her by this ridiculous candle-light. I would balance the book,one was "Le Rouge et le Noire" by Stendahl, with one hand and sit on the other hand to keep it warm. After a while I would change my position to thaw out the free hand. This way we got two tomes read.At midnight, when the lights went on again, we could listen to the BBC.  After that, to bed, under the huge down-covers. One night I heard my mother whisper and asked her what she was doing. We are not church-goers and  nobody talks about praying, but that is what my mother was doing. She was praying that the Americans, who had had some trouble in Normandy, would succeed with their advance. Needless to say, we were not good Germans.