My Dad’s narrative continued:
“Before returning home, a major problem happened. I finally reached the house around 10:00pm, and knocked on the door several times before someone would answer my call. In those days everyone was extremely fearful, and someone at the door at that time of the night could represent several different problems. My wife and the children were still illegally in the country, so they were afraid that it was the police coming to take them. But, after insisting for a while, the door opened just a little bit, in almost total darkness, and was quickly slammed back and closed. I noticed that it was my wife who opened it, but, why didn’t she let me in? So I started saying, “Marie, Marie, open the door, it is Saša!” I had to repeat it several times before that door opened again and I was allowed to get in. What could have possibly caused that?
Well, imagine a woman and three children at home at night, and then a stranger knocking on the door. A male, looking homeless, with a beard, and appearing to be just a walking skeleton! How many women would open the door that fast? And yes, that was exactly the description of myself at that moment. But I knew I was home, they were all still there, so I just needed to make them know it was actually me coming back home after SEVEN months.
My conditions were really bad during those seven months, but my wife told me what happened to her and the children during those days. When the Germans were approaching as they were invading Belgium in 1941, the population received an order from the City that they had to leave and go towards the South, in the direction of France. There were 3 million people marching on the roads, fleeing from the German invasion. The conditions were precarious, with no food or place where to spend the night. Marie had a hard time because Ivan was still small, and Gustav had been sick for a while and so she had to take them both on a stroller while Alex could walk with her. Soon the rubber from the stroller's wheels fell off, making it much more difficult to push it. The conditions were really bad, as there were dead people everywhere, even on some trees. They found abandoned homes on those small farms where they were walking, and once in a while they could get a hen and some eggs.
On one occasion, the group that Marie was with spent the night in a barn on an abandoned farm. She woke up very early that morning, before 5:00, as did one other lady. So they decided to start walking even before the group woke up. They were on the road for a while when they noticed German airplanes approaching, and they bombarded that barn while those people were still sleeping. Everyone in the barn died…
Those people walked about 150 kilometers. Marie developed a black mark on her belly because after a few hours on the road every day, her arms would become tired and sore, so she started pushing the stroller with her belly. But soon the Germans reached that crowd and sent them back to Belgium on trucks. When Marie and the kids came back home they realised that everything in the house had been stolen and she could not even cook a meal for the children. After a few days, during the night, someone left two chairs at the front door, which they had stolen from the home while it was empty. Those chairs, along with 2 beds were the only furniture they had. I realized that my wife's situation was actually worse than mine at the camp. I got very little food, but at least I got one portion every day. Her situation, with three children, had been desperately worse.
I didn't know what to do next. I was back home, had my family together, but everything was confusing. I still had some money, but it would be enough for no longer than a couple of months. I spoke German, so I started helping the Mayor’s assistant, Mr. Marren, translating for him as he needed to communicate with the Germans that were around. There was still a shortage of food, and people got food stamps. Because of my contacts I got some extra stamps, especially because I was helping in two separate districts (cities), Cambron Senvensan and Cambron Casteau. We lived in that area for about 4 months.
In the beginning of 1943, I started a small timber business that I ran until 1945 - before returning to my country after the war. One day a man came and told me that the Germans had destroyed part of the woods on his property, and asked me to go with him to the German office to apply for reimbursement for those trees. He couldn’t speak German, and needed my help. We went there and I explained the case to them, but they were not willing to pay for the damage because there was no clear identification of who had done that. So I invited the commander to come to my home the next day for dinner, aiming to negotiate the issue with him. My wife at first refused to cook for Germans, but after great insistence on my part, she finally agreed to it and prepared a nice meal.
The commander came along with two other officers, and before the dinner they told us how glad and thankful they were for a homemade dinner, since for about three months the only food they were having was cabbage. Cabbage every day, and only cabbage. That was bad news and I I felt that we would be in trouble... because the main dish my wife had prepared was based on ... cabbage! So when they started eating they got only a small portion of it, but then they realized that the food tasted very good, so they changed their mind and ate much more. That recipe was very good. Then, after dinner, we discussed the business and they told me to come in the morning to the station to introduce me to their boss.
The following day I went to their office and one of them introduced me to the higher commander, telling him what division (he made it up) was responsible for destroying the property and that we were requesting a reimbursement. The commander then signed an authorization and everything was resolved. The owner of the property received his money within a couple of weeks. He actually rewarded me, but way too modestly for all that work, giving me a bag of about 3 kg of potatoes - which of course didn’t even pay for the dinner we prepared for those Germans…
Now I will tell more about our life during the German occupation. As I already said, I had started a timber business at that time. My sawmill was in Florennes (we were living in Vodecée at that time, about 6 km from Florennes). Everything was regulated by the Germans at that time. Nothing could be sold without the authorization of the German officials, including food. There was a central office and they told everyone who had a business what could or could not be done. In my case they regulated even the most minimal details, saying how much wood could be stored and what to do with it. They determined to whom it should be sold and put the price on it, too. But the amount of wood extracted from the forest was huge. At a certain time I had up to 100 employees working for me. I didn’t keep any accountant records - during the war we didn’t even think about this legal aspect. The Germans would tell us where to deliver the timber, I got paid, and that was the end of each transaction.
The German Army ordered a huge amount of tree cuts that had to match certain specifications, wood that they would transport to the beaches and then would put them vertically in the ocean pushing them into the sand at a certain distance of the shore. The idea was to prevent the allies from disembarking on those beaches. A totally dumb idea, but they paid lot for that wood, so I just supplieD it to them. The Germans would leave their trucks at night on our property so that they could be loaded early in the morning, then the drivers would come to pick them up. After a while I was called to the German office and told by a Commander that ïnterestingly enough”their trucks started presenting problems after they ran a few kilometers from our place. It seems that someone was tampering with thos trucks… I told them that it was certainly a coincidence, but that I would talk to my employees so that they would increase the security at night… Of course I knew that my employees were sabotaging the trucks as much as they could, so I asked them to just do less of that, not "treating” every single German truck, but only some of them…
Because the cuts had to match certain specifications (diameter and length), only a certain number of them could be loaded on those trucks. I was paid by the unit delivered. Everything was going well until I noticed that the number of pieces loaded was increasing gradually. I knew something was wrong, so I went to check it when the trucks were being loaded; only to learn that my employees were throwing in pieces that didn't meet the diameter specifications, thus significantly increasing the total load. I knew that it could take me in front of a fire squad when the Germans would find out about it. So I decided to address the issue with the German Commander, seeking for a solution, a way to fix the situation. I invited him to our home one day, and opened a bottle of a very good wine… We had a great conversation…, and about the issue, he said, “Ohh, don't worry, those people by the beach couldn't care less about it at all, they don’t even know that there are specifications to be matched. Just don’t push too hard on it and you will be fine”... I gave him a few bottles of wine to take home, and never heard of anything about this issue. Of course, I told the employees to be more careful, but they couldn't care less either. Being Belgians, they were more than happy sabotaging the Germans as much as they could. It was a good business and I made lots of money at that time.
I remember when one day, as the war was coming to an end, a couple of German soldiers came to our home again for some questioning and one of them noticed our children speaking in Czech. He was for Poland and had been taken as a “volunteer” into the German army. We used to hear radio programs broadcasted in French from England because they were always telling where the allied forces were and how they were advancing. When those soldiers were at our home the radio started giving some of those news and I rushed to turn it off - because it was forbidden to hear those stations. But the officer told me to keep it on because they too wanted to hear about it. The radio told where the Americans were already in France, and the soldiers started laughing saying that there were no Americans in France, that it was all a lie. I told them that if the news came from England it was probably true. They thought for a minute and concluded that most probably they were not told the truth about it all. They had come to our home and brought lots of food with them; for some reason they didn’t want to eat it at their camp.
While they were eating, a soldier came looking for them, so after knocking on the door I answered and when he saw all that food on the table he started cursing them saying that the soldiers have had no food for two days and they had all that food available for them? So they told him to shut up, not telling anybody, and invited him to the table to have the meal with us. To which he answered, “No, I am an honest soldier and if my colleagues have no food I will starve with them instead of eating with you” . When they left they went to our neighbors home too where they had coffee with them and after that they took off to their camp. After about half an hour the neighbor, Ms. Esghem came in tears telling us that an English plane had attacked those officers’ vehicles and all were dead. She didn’t like the Germans but she was certainly sad for those young kids who died. Yes, the allies were coming closer now.
The Germans were hated by the Belgian population because of their conduct and general behavior. But everyone had to work for them anyway in order to survive and eat. The Germans were building an airport close to our home, and there were eight thousand Belgians working on that project. They of course sabotaged whatever they could and worked as slow as they could.”
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