This is the story written by my Grandma's niece (making her my Mom's cousin... and my first cousin once removed). Most of the spelling and grammar is as she wrote it.
Lottie’s Story
Lottie’s Story
The beginning: First of all I want to say that my family and I are German, born in Poland. We not for a moment thought of ourselves other than German. We had our own churches, all denominations, Lutherans, Baptists, Mennonites, what have you. The government of course was Polish, and Poles held high-ranking offices, like president etc. The main language was Polish of course, but we in the village spoke German all the time. My grandmother understood Polish but never learned the language, and pretty well those in our village that spoke Polish, did so with an accent, at least my relatives. In our nearest little town, Gombin, business was done in both languages, and the business people were mostly Jewish, also Polish or German. To that little town the farmers took their stuff to the market and also that was where you bought larger items like clothing etc. In school we were taught Polish and German and we kids spoke our language among ourselves. We had two Polish families living near us, they were for hire, when some farmer needed help, they were called on.
They spoke German as well as we did. Their kids went to school with us and there never was any trouble between us all. The Polish government was very satisfied with the German farmers. They paid their taxes on time, and the farms were very well looked after. First of all the earth was very rich, and the German people had everything in order, in other words they prospered. We also had many orchards. My family grew all the fruit possible. What we could not use ourselves was sold.
We lived very close to the largest river in Poland, called Vistula. In German Weichsel. Large boats and barges went up and down to larger cities, including the Polish capital Warsaw. There my father would take the fruit, mostly apples and plums for sale. We lived about 80 km from Warsaw. On two occasions my Dad took me along. I remember on the large market you could see all kinds if things that we did not grow. One man was selling something that looked so good, so I asked my Dad to get me some. It was watermelon. I sure did not like it. But with my Dad, you ate it, even if you hated it, so I did. My Dad also took me on a streetcar in Warsaw, we went to a zoo. For a kid seven years old or so, that was really something . None, absolutely none of my friends had ever been to Warsaw, never mind to a zoo. There I remember mostly big beautiful birds that talked. That impressed me the most, of course all the other animals like lions elephants etc. did too. One other thing I remember on that trip was that we got lost, and my dad was worried we’d miss the boat, and I was very very worried, probably cried. However, we made it home safely.
I also remember going on a school trip on the boat to another larger city called Plock, about 30 km from home. My parents gave me one zloty to spend for the day. That was a fortune in my eyes, but I blew the wad. That was were I tasted ice cream for the first time. Imagine that I was probably 8 or 9 years old and had an ice cream cone for the first time. How times have changed.
Our school was a typical country school. One teacher, one room, and the teacher had taught my uncles, so you can see, he was pretty old. But I was his pet. I was asked to do all the neat things, got to sing a solo in school plays, all kinds of neat things that happen in school. When the weather was bad, like snowy or raining, he asked me to stay over. The teacher and his family lived in the same building as the school, and the church was very close, just a few feet away. The teacher was also a very close friend of my grandfather. When we visited Poland in 1991 we stopped by the school, and after not seeing the place for 50 some years, there was hardly any change. It was not a school anymore, a family lived there, the kids were bussed to some other place, but the building had not changed and the church was used for Catholic services. Mind you it was very very run down. It brought tears to my eyes.
