On December 28th, 2015 I was interviewed once again by Greg Mackling of CJOB Radio, Winnipeg. The topic of our conversation was my latest writing project “Forget Me Not – A Bouquet of Stories, Thoughts and Memories” which was printed on an Espresso Book Machine at the Nanaimo Harbourfront Library in order to give me some “proofing” copies. This video captures that conversation. The book is expected to become available in early 2016.
A radio program that will interest everybody: Greg Mackling of CJOB Radio in Winnipeg asked me if I care to talk about the different types of publishing. I had told him about my experience with the “Espresso Book Machine” popping out a book every 15 minutes once it is “uploaded”. My newest book, “Forget Me Not – A Bouquet of Stories, Thoughts and Memories” was printed on the machine, just to get some copies before it is published in January. I wanted copies to use as Christmas gifts! It’s rather expensive for a limited number of copies but a perfect way for people who just write for fun, write their life story for their family and want something of lasting value and “purrrrrfect gifts” for their loved ones. So listen to the program at 10.30 AM Pacific time (12:30 p.m. CT) on Monday, Dec. 28th on CJOB – http://cjob.com and click on “Listen Live”
In this video I read a Christmas story found in my latest book – “Forget Me Not – A Bouquet of Stories, Thoughts and Memories” which I hope will be generally available to all my blog followers early in the New Year. I will be sure to post further details in due course. In the meantime I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Giselle Roeder
Some nasty flu bug might catch you unawares. Have you thought about building up your immune system by increasing your vitamin intake? The summer with the wonderful berries, the fall with all the fresh and ripe fruit, both are gone, at least in our part of the world. Imported fruit and veggies do not contain enough natural vitamins and minerals to protect your health since they have to be picked when not ripe or ready. They are ‘gassed’ or prepared with chemicals to last and not go ‘bad’ during shipping until on the shopping counters for you to buy.
I would like to introduce you to a not so well liked vegetable, especially not in its raw form. I am talking about red beets. Most people say ‘oh, they have this earthy smell, I don’t like it and I can’t even imagine eating them raw.” On the other hand they are one of the healthiest things you could eat. They are loaded with enzymes, vitamins and minerals. The high iron content would not be advisable unless one is iron deficient. Let’s get practical and talk about the way you can ingest and enjoy red beets:
Red Beet salad: Again, one medium sized red beet, a much bigger juicy apple, ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, ½ lemon freshly pressed, 1 large heaped tablespoon of brown sugar or maple syrup, caraway seed if you like it. Mix oil, lemon and sugar/maple syrup/caraway. Grate the apple, stir into the mixture. Grate the beet and mix everything together. It can be eaten right away but I like to let it soak, stir again and then enjoy it. This beet salad is loaded with fiber as well and therefore also aids digestion.
Enjoy! Red Beet Salad
It is considered a “beauty salad” since it has a lot of vitamins good for the skin and sparkling healthy eyes.
Try the beet recipes, you may be surprised how good and refreshing they taste when prepared the way as above. The work with the preparation is worth the benefits. No side effects!
Remember: “He who has no time to care for his health daily will have to have time to be sick for weeks, months or years.”
And every single one of those stories, thoughts or memories carry some kind of subliminal message; a fact of life, parts of history, thoughts of previous and present political happenings, psychological insights. All those stories, even a few fairy tales, will entice conversations or discussions around the family table or with friends. Yes, go ahead and talk about it. It is not healthy to keep your thoughts or feelings ‘inside’, especially if they trouble you. I find it liberating to ‘talk about it’. It is surprising how often one just needs a sounding board. I am not always expecting my conversation partner to answer me, to give me advice or set me straight or even discuss my problems. When hearing yourself talking you often find or hear the answer.
Every story is standing on its own and is independent of the others. Some are short, some are longer. Quite a number are stories of unforgettable people, men or women I met along the journey of my life. Could it be that you find yourself in one of those stories? Where it was suitable I added a photograph as well. Many names have been changed to protect the privacy of the characters in the stories.
Somehow this book is a “bridge” between my memoir “We Don’t Talk About That” and the sequel to it, planned to be published in fall 2016. Since the sequel will be dealing with the rollercoaster ride through five decades after my emigration to Canada I decided to tell some of the stories ahead of time. An author is usually restricted to a certain word count to keep a book “manageable”.
“Forget Me Not” comes at the right time of year – Christmas time. It makes a fantastic stocking stuffer. It will make YOU unforgettable to the happy recipient.
The book is not yet available to the wider public. To receive a pre-publication copy, a collector’s dream, waiting for the final edit and maybe with the odd extra or missing comma, you may contact me using the form below giving me your name and email address. The cost for the pre-publication copy is $ 20.00CAD plus $4.10 CAD in Canada and $7.00 CAD postage to the USA..
Children in Europe get very excited on the evening of December 5th. They do something their parents for once don’t have to remind them of:
They clean their boots and shoes! And polish them until they shine.
Why would they do that? Only on this particular day, December the 5th? It is a tradition. Once upon a time, way back in the fourth century, there was a kind Bishop with the name Nicholas. He was the Bishop of Myra, now called Anatolia in Turkey. He had the gift of bringing children back to life or cure terrible ailments. He loved children. He gave them little gifts or secretly dropped coins into their shoes. After he died on December 6th 346 he was canonized and became a Saint, a Saint to protect the children. The people had revered Bishop Nicholas because he was so kind to their children. They celebrated his life on that day. To keep Bishop Nicholas, who was now Saint Nicholas, ‘alive’ in the minds of their children they would put little gifts or sweets into their cleaned shoes. If the children were unruly or had not been good they would put some dry branches or a stick into their shoe to remind them of a forthcoming punishment from Saint Nicholas. But Bishop Nicholas had never punished the children. The dry branches or the stick were the invention of the parents.
The tradition for children cleaning and polishing their shoes on the evening of December 5th has lived on, especially in Germany, Austria and Poland. Saint Nicholas is known by other names, – in German speaking countries it is Sankt Nikolaus; in Switzerland it is Samichlaus; in the Netherlands it is Sinterklaas and there are many more. The American Santa Claus or the Father Christmas in the UK is derived from the good old Saint Nicholas. For commercial reasons they now turn up at Christmas, Christ’s birthday. He is depicted a little differently in each country where the morning of December 6th is anticipated by the children and they look forward to find something in their shoes. They do what children have done for hundreds of years:
They clean their boots and shoes and put them outside their door. Some children are told to just put one shoe out in order not to look greedy. I can tell you from my own experience that we always put both shoes out to show Saint Nicholas how well we have cleaned them. But it is true there was only something in one of them. I remember, later in life, when I had no small children around and I would slip into my shoes or sometimes even my slippers in front of my bed my toes would touch something unusual: A wrapped delicious piece of chocolate or nougat and the warm rush of surprise would be flooding my body.
Did I believe it was Saint Nicholas who brought it? Yes, naturally. Sometimes I had taken over Saint Nicholas’ deeds and sometimes I think my teenagers had also been hired as helpers. Saint Nicholas’ Day is not replacing Santa Claus at Christmas at all. Not in most countries.
Give it a try. Tell your small children about Saint Nicholas and have them put their cleaned and shined shoes out on the evening of December 5th and enjoy their excitement on the morning of the 6th! It is magic to find something in one of your shoes…especially when you are not anticipating it.
Have Fun!
I was interviewed today by Greg Mackling of CJOB 680 in Winnipeg. You can hear the interview on YouTube at https://youtu.be/a0gjX3cIAoU
Many thanks to Greg and the staff at CJOB for allowing me this opportunity to talk about “We Don’t Talk About That”
Don’t think it is easy for me to tell you this story. It should be one of the chapters of the sequel to my book “We Don’t Talk About That”. It is a little love story but it really isn’t a love story. Read it and decide for yourself what you want to call it.
I met Hannes two months too late. Had we met two months earlier something might have become of it. Maybe. Maybe not. He had such an infectious laugh, such as I had never heard from a man and never did again. I knew he would never do or try something I would not want. He was ‘comfortable’ like an old pair of shoes, more like a brother and I felt at ease when I was with him. I still kept him at arm’s length. Why? There were several reasons. One, I was afraid I could fall in love with him. Two, he was in the middle of a divorce even it was a friendly one. Three, he was from the Rhineland and the Rhinelanders had a reputation for being ‘light weights’, people who didn’t take life too seriously. Fourth, he was Catholic and I was Lutheran, a match my parents would not approve of, even if neither of us were religious church goers. Fifth, I was in love with a little girl in Canada who needed a new mommy. Her father and I had been pen friends for two months and he wanted to marry me. But the main reason was I was afraid, simply afraid that a man who was obsessed with me, who had stalked me for years would be true to his promise to ruin any relationship I would ever have with another man. “If I can’t have you, nobody else will.” I had told Hannes all about it. Hannes listened, talked to me and made me see all sides, he pointed out the pros but mainly the cons about going to Canada. He sounded exactly like my father who thought I had gone totally bananas. “Canada! Marry a man you didn’t know, divorced and with a daughter? Nuts!” The problem was my compassion for that little girl, after seeing the photos with the sad eyes. I just couldn’t get her out of my mind. After I had met the grandparents in Wiesbaden I was lost. They didn’t even give me a chance to back out. I wasn’t strong enough. And I didn’t know I was being manipulated. The word did not exist in my vocabulary or my thinking.
Hannes became my best friend. He helped me plan my emigration. We went to the zoo in Hamburg, to a fabulous Indian Restaurant and sampled the “Indian Rice Table” with 23 little bowls containing different delectable types of food. We visited the “Pferdestall” a famous kind of pub/bar in an original horse barn. We attended “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the stage under the stars in the Herrenhäuser Gardens in Hanover. Until I started to get very involved with my Canadian penfriend and his parents and sadly, my friendship with Hannes somehow tapered out. It was the end of a time with lots of laughter for me but I didn’t realize it until much, much later. When I was living in Winnipeg in Canada I got terribly homesick. I wrote to Hannes telling him about my life. He was married to a lady he had seen in the theater. He wrote “I had noticed her legs and they reminded me of you.” He had approached her during intermission, they had a glass of champagne and the rest is history. Hannes and I remained in contact.
It was a few years later when I visited Germany again. I had arranged a meeting with the last company I worked for since I wanted to import their skin care line to Canada. I had been instrumental in developing a number of the creams. Before flying home I planned to visit my sister in Hamburg and since Hannes lived there he picked me up at the train station. He handed me a beautiful long stemmed dark red ‘Baccara Rose’. We walked across the busy plaza in front of the station to his parked car. After he put my suitcase in the trunk he opened the door for me. We both were a bit shy, not yet at ease as we had been during the two months in the past when we had laughed a lot. I held the rose and my purse with one hand, trying to arrange my fancy coat which had a split in the back so the two sides could be lifted and you would not sit on it. I changed the flower from my left to me right hand and arranged the coat around me with the other. Finally I was seated with both coat tails on my lap. Hannes asked “is everything in now?” We looked at each other when I replied, “yes everything is in”. He closed the door and walked around the car to his side. As he was inserting the car key I noticed I had only the stem of the rose in my hand. I felt the shock right down into my tummy:
“Hannes, look” I whispered with a tiny voice. Hannes grabbed his steering wheel, put his head on his arms and slowly, quietly said “Just like us. It’s our story. A beheaded love story, a beheaded rose. I should have seen the rose wasn’t in when I closed the door. Should we stop by a flower shop and I buy you a new one?”
We decided against it. After a while driving along Hannes started to laugh. His Rhineland humour had taken over and he thought the whole episode was really very funny. I was sorry to have lost the beautiful flower head but I saw the weird humour in it as well. Actually, because of the accident, – I never forgot the rose.
“Yesterday had been a day like all the other days during the last year and a half since the Russians invaded Germany. Everybody working at Junkers Aero Space, a former Nazi company researching and building aero planes in Dessau, was doing their job. It was incredible that the Soviet Government did not stop operations after their occupation but had the plant rebuilt, kept the work force and even expanded it. It was a direct violation of the Yalta agreement stating that Germany was not allowed to produce armaments. “
A reader of my book “We Don’t Talk About That” had sent me an e-mail asking if we might be able to meet. She and her brother lived about 30 km away, so we met halfway in a small café. The story they had to tell was shocking news to my ears. I never had read or heard about it.
At the end of WWII the technological achievements of Germany during the war proved a challenge and an opportunity for the two new world powers, the USA and the Soviet Union. Germany had excelled in futuristic technologies, especially in the area of aerospace. Both powers were quick to gather the top German scientists and engineers and relocate them to their countries. Wernher von Braun was the best known scientist taken to the USA to support their rocket program. The story of Junkers Aerospace was virtually unpublicized, the company being located in the eastern part of Germany. Junkers had been the most advanced aircraft manufacturer worldwide at the end of WWII with such concepts as the “discovery of the area rule, operation of jet engines on its aircraft, cabin pressurisation and designs involving forward swept wings.” With the cold war looming and the arms race both powers tried to outdo the other in the aftermath of WWII.
I could hardly believe it when my guests told me that Junkers had been rebuilt and, at the end of June 1946 employed 3.325 people sworn to strict secrecy, a slip of the tongue punishable by death. Their father was one of those workers. They themselves were small children. The German employees lived in the small city built around the plant tightly controlled by the Soviets. Nobody had ever expected a re-location of this huge company to the Soviet Union. But, all equipment and personnel of Junkers was to be re-located. At its peak 4.000 Soviet secret service and military personnel were involved in the planning and execution of the plan. Re-location plans were talked about when an airplane built there could not be tested because the runway was too short. But it never occurred to the employees and unbeknownst to them the plane was shipped to Russia. It was the start of something traumatic.
With not even a hint on the morning of the 22nd October 1946, more than a year after the invasion, hard knocks on every house door woke the occupants. Military trucks were standing ready to be loaded with whatever every family decided to take with them as they were told of a re-location. Trains were waiting at the station. They did not have much time to plan or pack, – just get ready. They also had no idea where their final destination was. After a very long uncomfortable journey they had arrived at a small village built of simple “Finnish” prefab houses about 100 kilometers from Moscow. The village even had a German church, a German school and some small shops. Their father’s job as an engineer had been an important one in Germany as well as it was now in Russia. Some families had asked to leave their families in Germany but the appeal was ignored and not answered.
These two people, sitting with me at a small table drinking coffee, told me the story of their life in Russia. They were small children, three and five years old, they went to school in Russia, learned what it meant “not to talk about it”, referring to topics talked about at home. Incredible hardships, one of the worst being the Russian winters and living in a very cold and drafty house were part of their daily life. The Germans were teaching Russian employees all they knew and in many cases a certain comradery developed between them.
Seven years later talk about going “home” started to circulate. Little by little certain families were picked up and left town but their turn had not come yet. Another year went by and finally the family could go home but the father still had to stay. They sold almost all of their possessions hoping to start fresh in a new Germany. They knew two Germanys had been established, the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the BDR, the western part. The family was relocated to East Berlin and the Mother tried to re-establish old connections. She soon realized that she would like to be in West Germany. A job offer for her husband by a Mannheim company would be available once he returned from Russia.
My two guests told me that it wasn’t all “just bad”. The total re-location of people and workplace had created a German island in Russia. Close friendships were established, neighbours helping neighbours, entertainment was ‘home made’ and the shortage of almost everything led to creativity and do it yourself projects. More children were born there and considered this place their home. A number of people had married a Russian and did not want to go back to Germany. However, now, many years after the deportation and living in Russia for eight years, people have gone back to visit remaining friends and see the further development of their little village into a town and come back with stories about the incredible hospitality they have experienced. Many of these former special workers are now living all over the world and the older generation starts to thin out. The connections between these people having lived in Russia against their will is incredibly strong and after fifty years the first and now more regular anniversary reunions have been organized where it all started: In Dessau, Germany.
There still are so many untold stories out there, seventy-five years after the horrible war. It is so hard to believe that soldiers, people, children had no say in what happened to them, they were moved by cruel hands like chess figures. There is so much we still don’t know.
Remember: Lest we forget.
I was interviewed by Gregor Craigie from the On The Island program on CBC Radio One this morning. The interview is reproduced in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/ax9-0rcdSbk
The lecture takes place at 10:00 a.m. on Nov 7th at the Nanaimo campus of VIU.and is entitled “My Escape from Germany after WWII”.For details see: https://www2.viu.ca/eldercollege/courses.asp#sss
Giselle Roeder 