My Mom

I have wanted to write this for years but somehow just never got around to it. I've asked Mom to do it and she hasn't done it either. Her story is amazing and tells a lot about her. I'm not sure if I will get it right because Mom seldom talked about growing up and as a child I seldom asked questions. What I'm going to write is what I remember of stories I've heard or been told.

My Mom was born in Essen, Germany, on April 18 1933. She has 2 brothers, Hans and Mario, and one sister, Evelyn. Her first day of school WWII started in Germany. She told me she remembers someone boarding the windows of a church up and setting it on fire with all the people in it. I think it was the Nazi's and the church was a synagogue. As the war progresses Hitler took all the pure German children away from their parents and put them in orphanages so they could move them around and try to keep them away from the war. Mom was taken from her family and raised in the orphanage until the war was over. I can only imagine what it must have been like being raised in such a place. There were food shortages due to the war and I'm sure that there was illness too. There couldn't have been much nurturing and loving for these poor kids.
Mom tells one story about when the Americans came. None of the German kids had ever seen a black man except at Christmas. At Christmas St. Nicholas came to the door of each house and asked if the children had been good. If they hadn't his black assistant would spank them. I don't know if the assistant was really black for just painted black. When the Americans came there were several blacks in the group. The children were all scared of them. The soldiers would put chocolate out to lure the children to them. Since they were half starved and hadn't had chocolate in a long time this tactic worked.
Mom said that one time they were being bombed. The children were learning to knit when the bombs started dropping. The children were all running for cover when Mom felt an excruciating pain in her rear end. She thought for sure she had been shot but somehow with all the confusion she had been stabbed with a knitting needle.
Well I will have to come back and continue my story later. Just writing this reminded me how thankful I should be for the life the Lord has given me. Thank-you God.