Daughter Remembers the end of Illa's Story
This is a true story, posted by her daughter on Steemit.
Although Ilse did not get to write her last chapter, she would often discuss with me what she wanted to include. Ilse had a positive outlook and she was mostly optimistic.
Without the guidance of her longhand written stories, let me give you some closure on the story. . .
I remember my Mom telling me that finding wood for the wood stove was one of Opa’s biggest quests. Most trees and abandoned wood was already taken by people lucky enough to have a wood stove. One day, the neighbors got together eyeing one of the huge Oak trees that lined their street. It was illegal to cut down live Oak trees, with the exception that it was diseased. The local police officer lived in the neighborhood. Someone poured something around the roots of the tree and when the old Oak tree started to look unhealthy, they called the police officer over to have a look.
With a knowing expression, he agreed that it could be cut down; with the condition that he would get his choice of wood. It was cut-down the next morning and by nightfall, there was not a sign of an Oak tree ever having stood there. The people even carried the roots away.
While attending school in the city, Ilse noticed the same partiality she had come to know in Southern Germany. Down south, she was the Northern City Girl without a name; they called her – ‘the Girl’. She was not allowed to fully take part in community events. Now, back in her home city, she noticed how people reacted to her southern accent. There was no escape to people’s prejudice’s.
The Red Cross was set up and the Quakers provided most meals at the schools. Peas soup was all too often on the menu, and Ilse came to hate it. Even in her adult years she never prepared or ate pea soup. I am a testament as I do not remember eating pea soup at home.
One day soon after arriving back in Hamburg, Oma took Ilse with her to some busy streets in their crumbled city. There were women sitting in the rubble on the streets. They worked at scraping the cement off bricks so that they could be reused, to rebuild Hamburg. People were carrying their devaluated German Marks, and standing in long lines to buy bread. The sight of American soldiers was always welcomed. At some point on the main street they stopped walking. A billboard was erected along a busy section of the City and Oma stopped and looked at it with Ilse. Photographs of the people that were in the concentration camps were plastered onto the billboard. People that looked more like skeletons, people without hair and sunken eyes. There were photos of thousands of skeleton-people lying in heaps, not wearing any clothes. Oma remarked on these photos to Ilse, and in a very serious tone she said: “The German’s will have to pay for this for the rest of their lives; you will have to pay for this for the rest of your life.” At the time, 5 year-old Ilse could not grasp the totality of the statement, but she had become familiar with discrimination.
At some time later, Opa decided to plant a tree in the middle of his 'garden' lot. It was a Linden Tree. His reason was exemplary. “Gretchen; Do you see these mighty Oak trees that line our property? They will turn red in the autumn, and here smack in the middle, in contrast, will stand my tree with its autumn leaves; golden.”
A poem from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow:
Though it’s another year,
Though it’s another me,
Under the rose is a drying tear,
Under my linden tree . . .
Love never goes away,
Not if it’s really true,
It can return by night, by day,
Tender and green and new
As the leaves from a linden tree,
Love,
That I left with you
