A Mother's Day Story

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Part 1: A Journey to Freedom and the United States

This is a special edition of Salesmuser dedicated to Mother’s Day. Today’s story is about my mom, the most amazing and special lady I know. I hope everyone feels the same about their mom. No matter how their kids turn out, moms never give up on their kids. But, as the offspring of our parents, we often ignore or overlook their past and the hardships, the tragedies, and the emotional and physical pain they may have endured. This is my mom’s story..

My mom is a giant in my life. Standing only 5’4”, with a thin build, her presence hides her inner strengths. Endless patience, a stoically calm demeanor, and virtuous resolve. She embodies all the reasons we celebrate Mother’s Day. Although I towered over her, Mom’s gentle and thoughtful ways always kept me in control during my stupid teenage years. Her strong German accent wasn’t noticeable to me, but it apparently was very obvious to others.

This story begins in World War II Germany, where the destruction of war left so many refugees homeless, with no food and no money. Mom was the second oldest of five children. Along with their mother, the family was caught on the wrong side of what was about to be a divided country. Mom’s home was in West Prussia, which would be taken over and become communist Poland, a pawn of communist Russia. 

In early February 1945, the Nazi army forced Mom, her family, and the residents of her town to board a train to nowhere. They were told not to worry, leave their belongings, and bring food for one meal. They were told they’d return in three days or less, but there was no other explanation. As they traveled through the countryside, the sounds of gun and cannon fire were everywhere.

Traute Bliss - 11 Years Old

The cramped train passengers were starving after a few days. Mom still has a vivid memory of jumping from the train and wading out in waist-deep snow to make a snowball to nibble on during the trip. One evening, the train stopped in the historic city of Dresden, Germany. They left the next day, narrowly escaping the city’s pummeling by Allied bombs. The resulting fires scoured the city, leaving 23,000 civilians dead. After seven days of stopping, departing the train to wait for hours in the cold, and doing it again and again in different locations, they were all finally dumped at a town far away from home. 

Post World War II Germany

Mom was twelve years old in 1946. One morning, the American troops guarding the area where her family camped suddenly moved out. The next day, the communist Russians moved in. After two World Wars and countless lives lost on both sides, there was no love lost between these countries. 

Russians loathed Germans, and the same could be said for the Germans about the Russians at this time. War is an awful device of human creation. Along with the dead, it destroys lives, torments its combatants, divides societies, and fosters oppressive prejudices and bigotry.  

Her family was among the thousands of civilian refugees trapped on that side of the country by a regime that didn’t want them there. Rumors would often circulate among the refugees that the Americans were at a new location. 

Every rumor sent Mom’s family in search of the security and generosity of the Americans. Matters were compounded when the hope that her father would return faded. Mom’s dad was a policeman before the war but was drafted into the service. He survived the war but, in an act of cowardice, chose not to return to his family. 

Hearing Mom retell the story and seeing the emotional pain well up in her disgusts me. How can a man who was responsible for bringing five lives into the world leave them at their most vulnerable situation and the worst possible time? What kind of man does this?

Most of 1946 found Mom’s family living in the forest and, on a very rare occasion, finding a farmer who would allow them to sleep in their barn. Food came by way of begging. After the potatoes were harvested from the fields for the Russian soldiers, the farmers were allocated a tiny share. Mom’s family snuck into the harvested fields at night to sift through the near frozen ground for any remaining potatoes.

On a frigid Christmas night, the family was desperate to find warmth. Mom knocked on a farmer's door hoping to find shelter in their house. The man stepped forward to see a family of six. 

“Too many kids,” he barked, slamming the door in Mom’s face.

The Evils of Men

War also reveals an even darker side at times. A small number of soldiers lose their moral compass and compound the atrocities of war by committing other crimes. Innocent women experience their wrath through rape. 

Perhaps some of the men who commit these crimes didn’t have much of a moral compass before fighting in a war. There is nothing moral about the ravages of war and its impact on those who fight it and bear witness to it. We see how the atrocities of war have severely impacted so many U.S. soldiers fighting terrorist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Do the horrors of war and the indescribable scenes of death tilt the moral compass of a few men into a criminal zone?

A Terrible Memory

Mom’s family stumbled onto a very generous couple who allowed them to stay in their home one night. These were extremely hard times. Even those who had homes had no money, and food was scarce for everyone. This particular lady and her husband were much different from any of the others who reluctantly helped the family. They welcomed my mother’s family into their home for one night and treated them with dignity. 

As evening fell, Mom’s oldest sister (who was16) was already wrapped in a blanket and hiding under a bed; these were the precautions necessary in case soldiers came to the house. It wasn’t long before the front door of the house rattled with banging from the outside and shouts to open the door. A Russian officer and other soldiers barged into the room. The officer waved his pistol, pointed it at the couple who owned the home and told them if the search uncovered any guns in the house, everyone would be shot. 

No guns were discovered, but the officer was enraged. He shouted at everyone in the house and shot his pistol once through the ceiling and once through the floor. The families shivered with fear, anticipating one of them would be shot next. 

The officer then turned his attention to the women. He looked first at my mom’s mother. She knew what they were after and prepared herself to look old. She was only 37 but wearing a tattered scarf helped hide her youth. When the officer lifted her chin, she presented him with a nasty scowl that made her look much older than she was. 

“This is an old woman,” he growled.

Then, he grabbed the kind lady who invited Mom’s family into her home. He dragged her up the stairs while she screamed and fought to get away. As Mom recounted the story for me, the rawness of that memory came flooding back. She paused to regain her composure and continue retelling the story. Everyone could hear the woman screech and beg them to stop as she was raped. 

Mom was a 12-year-old girl, bearing witness to the evils of war.

Dividing a Country

The constant search to find the Americans caused my family to unknowingly cross the border that separated communist Russia from the free western countries of Europe. The Soviet Union (USSR) was formally Russia but now included many countries it had taken over during the war. 

The day after they crossed, the border was closed. Mom’s grandmother, five cousins, and their parents were stuck in communist Poland. Her cousin's father was seized for false reasons and sent to die in the infamous USSR Gulags. The relentless work by Mom’s mother, working through the Red Cross, finally allowed the fractured family to reunite four years later.

Freedom

Once the family crossed the border, they were interned in a refugee camp operated by the Americans. First, the family was sent through a delousing process. Then families were randomly assigned to different parts of Germany. Mom and her family were shuttled off to their designated town in northern Germany. 

Initially, they lived with 30 other refugees all crammed into a one-room school. Over time, families were relocated to farmers' homes in the area. The people who had homes were each required to make a room available for one refugee family. The refugees were not wanted by the farmers as they added to their hardships, too.

A Catastrophic Loss

In 1947, not long after being assigned to their new hometown, tragedy struck. Mom’s oldest brother, Gerhard, came down with a severe infection. He picked a pimple on his nose, which turned into a larger sore that he continued to irritate. The sore got infected, and within a few days, the infection ravaged his body and finally caused his death. There were no antibiotics around at the time; if there had been, they would have saved his life. After living through all of the chaos and fears of war, along with Mom’s oldest sister surviving typhoid fever, the fragility of life and loss of her brother devastated Mom’s family.

Mom’s family of six was sadly now just five. They would live in this one room of the farmer for six years. After about two years, her oldest sister, Hilda, fell in love with a wonderful, kind-hearted man. She married Bruno when she was 18, and they would spend more than 50 years together. There were now four living in one room, and the burden of providing an income fell on Mom’s shoulders. 

The state provided the family the equivalent of $9.00 U.S. per month. Half of the money was paid as rent to the farmer, and the rest was used for food and clothing. Mom and her youngest sister would look for work each day after school at different farms to help the family.

The First Official Job

Mom’s commitment to the family and to provide money for them prevented her from attending high school. She dreamed of being a gym teacher, but there was no money or chance to fulfill her dream. Her first job was as a housekeeper for a dentist and his family many hours away from her home. She lived in a tiny room and worked from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day making $12/month. She did all house duties except cooking, with never a moment to spare for herself. Almost a year passed before she could leave to visit her family during Christmas. When her mother learned of the long hours she worked, my mother wasn’t allowed to return.

She found a job making light bulbs at a factory run by the Dutch firm Philips. The job was closer to home, but it required a 25-mile round trip commute by bicycle each day. At 18, Mom was able to apply for an apartment subsidized by the German government. Within six months, a small one-room apartment came available in a larger town, allowing the family to finally be on their own. The job and security lasted about a year until the factory closed.

Mom’s next position was at a meat rendering plant and food preparation and processing factory. Mom worked for about four years in a vast kitchen preparing the food for canning.

A Fortuitous Event

Back in the U.S., during the 1950s young men wondered if they would be drafted into military service. Conscription (commonly known as the draft) for World War II began in 1940. The draft remained in place to fill the military's ranks until 1973, when the U.S. military became an all-volunteer service. 

My dad’s basketball scholarship to T.C.U. would be cut short his sophomore year when he got drafted into the U.S. Army. After his basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington, was complete, the sergeant lined up all the men. He cut the company of 220 soldiers in two with the wave of his hand. He then announced the group to his right was going to Korea and the other group would go to Germany. Dad went to Germany.

Dad served his two years in the Army and returned to the States. Upon his return, three of his friends from the Army decided to go back to Europe with the money they’d saved from their military service. 

It just so happened that Dad and his friends found their way back to Germany. Being the gregarious type, Dad somehow met and became good friends with a local German family. While his travel buddies returned to the U.S., Dad stayed in Germany and worked at his newfound friend’s business. Later on, Dad took a job at a meat processing plant.

A Streetcar for Love

Along with a very long walk, Mom hopped the streetcars each day to her job. One day, my dad spotted her on the same streetcar he was traveling in. About a year later, he saw her again on the same streetcar. 

This time he decided to approach her and introduce himself. First, he asked her if she spoke English, to which she shook her head no. Then, being completely silly, he asked her if she knew Spanish. She looked at him bewildered. Dad didn’t know Spanish either and not much German, for that matter. But when you’re goofy over a girl, you do goofy stuff. 

Over the next six months, he would see her many times and noticed she worked at a different location at the huge meat factory where they were both employed. 

In the large break room for the employees, Dad got his chance again to make an impression on Mom. He spotted her sitting with co-workers at a distant table. Dad told the attendant bringing food and drinks to the workers' tables that he’d like to buy a Coke for the beautiful maiden over there. Cokes were almost a luxury item and far outside of Dad’s budget. 

To Dad’s surprise, the beautiful maiden declined his gracious gift. She remembered what her mother told her about men.

“If you take something from a man, they’ll want something in return,” her mother had explained.

Traute Begger - 21 Years Old

It took from December to May before she would agree to their first date over coffee. They sat quietly and uncomfortably, sipping from their cups of coffee. Dad knew a little more German but hardly enough to hold a conversation.

Even so, in a little less than a year, Mom and Dad got married and left for the United States. After Dad proposed to Mom, her mother insisted they find her father to tell him. A laborious search finally uncovered his whereabouts. Mom was filled with hope that maybe her father would become part of their life again. 

She knocked on the door of his apartment. Another woman answered the door and showed her inside. Her dad was laying on a couch and finally turned his gaze to his daughter. During the brief and awkward conversation, he didn’t even lift his worthless self up to hug his own flesh and blood. The disdain and disrespect shown by her father ripped Mom’s heart in two. Witnessing the scene of her cowardly father left an indelible mark on her soul. She swore to herself, never again. 

That was the last time Mom would see or hear from her dad.

Mom’s story will continue in part two of her life in the United States.

Do you know your parents' story? Please don’t wait for Mother’s Day to learn your mom’s story. Find your own way to celebrate your mom on Mother’s Day, and don’t stop there. Every day is a perfect day to tell your mother how much you love her and appreciate her for all she’s done for you in your life.