Trudy Triller

My grandmother doesn’t like to discuss the war.  To Trudy Triller, it was not a romantic tale of heroic deeds.  War is the memory of sacrifice made for the good of the country.  To my grandmother the war was an intruder, a thief, and an invasion of her youth.  There have been few times in my life when she has discussed any of the memories of it with me.  One thought she did share, however, has been etched in my mind.   I asked her how the war changed the person she was; she simply replied,  “War is something that doesn’t change your life, it makes you a different person.”  Before that moment I had never thought of her as anyone other than my sweet, little grandma.  Since then, I have thought of her as someone who had more courage at fourteen than I will have at the end of my life, someone who is never bitter about actions far beyond her control; but especially someone who never stops living, even when her entire world fell apart right before her eyes.

 

I was born in March 1925 in Frankfurt, Germany. My mother was a full time housewife.  Before she got married she worked as a postal inspector.  My father was a linotype operator.  My first good memory of childhood was standing on a little green chair playing the French harp, remembering the sound of the police academy riding by.  There were about two hundred horses; I remember the sound of their hooves on the cobblestone streets.

 We had relatives in the Westervalt, a mountain range in Western Europe.  We used to travel there a lot on a train.  I thought the high line poles were moving by us, I could see them flying by.  The worst memory from my childhood was when my brother swallowed the church money in church.  My mother gave him a two cent piece; he was sitting right by me.  All at once he put it in his mouth and swallowed it.  I grabbed him real fast and ran to the doctor.  [The doctor] had compassion on us; even though it was Sunday morning, he helped us.  At the time I was five, my brother was three.  I thought he was going to die. 

            They built a new school for us, a pavilion school, with open balconies. They encouraged children to go out into the open.  In grade school there were fifty-one girls.  We had religion class everyday; a priest came for the Catholic girls and a minister for the Protestant girls.  There were twenty-six Catholic girls and twenty-five were Protestant.  There were so many children that they divided them up into a girl’s school and a boy’s school.  [We had] twenty-six subjects in high school.  We went to school six days a week, from seven in the morning until one in the afternoon. 

            I wanted to be a PE teacher, or a graphic designer.  Things turned out differently though. The war came. 

            When the war started, I was only fourteen.   There was an autobahn about thirty minutes from where we lived.  The first thing we noticed was there were trucks going down the highway, one after another after another, every kind of truck.  That was what we noticed from the window.  August 27, 1939 my aunt had a birthday party for one of my uncles.  While we were there, a man came and said that one of my uncles had to go to the army.  We were stunned. No one knew anything about it, no one had been talking about it.  People came by and brought books of stamps.  They were our rationing stamps. Rationing started on the first of September.  Not everyone had a radio, so news didn’t travel so fast.  On the first of September a neighbor asked to walk me home from the sports club.  He told me, “As of today, we are in a war.”   I remember thinking, “Now what will happen?” 

In 1938 they started to build huge buildings with walls meters thick.  These buildings were called bunkers.   A bunker was able to hold four to five hundred people.  We were told these buildings were meant for our protection, in case something should ever happen.  Inside the bunkers there were benches, lights, hallways, rooms, clinics, even doctor’s offices.  The size of a bunker could be compared to the Hotel Stillwell.  Another part of life also changed, everything had to be dark.  Our houses, windows, streetlights, car lights, even bicycle lights had to be darkened.  We were allowed only a one by three centimeter opening on car and bicycle lights.  In 1939 life hadn’t changed so much.  By 1940, it was terrible, we went to the bunkers more than once a night, and life was not like it used to be. 

High school continued like normal.  When the sirens went off, we went to the bunker in the basement and continued learning.  We thought the war would end; when it went on for six years, the boys had to go.  In my neighborhood there were seven boys and myself.  Out of the seven only one came home. His heel had been blown off.  When we graduated, I was class president.  I was to make a speech. I was nervous to speak.  I was halfway through when the alarm went off.  We went to the bunker, between the noise and the impact, we were all sure we would die.  When we came back up, the school was gone. 

There was a program set up for all the girls that were in their teens. It was your duty to go to the work force or help a family with housework, where the husband was at the front.  I went to the Black Forest; I was to help in the fields. We all lived together in a main house. My job was to pick cotton in the fields. In the beginning I was to only stay a year.  By 1944 seventy-five percent of Frankfurt was destroyed, so I stayed longer.  At dinner we got a piece of bread, butter, a piece of bacon, and a glass of wine.  I always saved my bacon, and mailed it in small packages to my family who were still in the city.  I walked twenty miles to Munich in the snow in a skirt and coat to take diphtheria tests for evaluation.  I took these tests so the girls could go home for Christmas. Since there were so many health problems in the city, we had to be tested before we could go there.  I walked through Frankfurt.  When I got there, I had no idea where I was.  I was on my own street.                 

You grow up real fast in a war.  You learn things and see things you would not have otherwise. You do things you wouldn’t have thought you would have done.  You are a grown up in no time.  I don’t know if I’m a better person for [having lived through] the war.  I am more experienced.  The war isn’t something that changes you, it makes you a completely different person.  It made you appreciate you have a Lord and Savior, it is a faith you might not have otherwise. 

My absolute low point was walking through a little village. It had been bombed with every kind of bomb.  The whole village was on fire, people, and horses walking around still on fire.  There were three little children standing on some hay. When the hay caught on fire, so did one of the children.  I set down my suitcase and took the children to the only house still standing.  Everyone was running toward the house.  As I walked away, I saw my suitcase burning.  It contained the only possession I had kept throughout the war, my diary.  I took up the children and ran to the pantry where we hid.  It was Easter time so the house was filled with Easter cakes.  We were standing in the pantry hiding when we heard the Americans coming.  A bayonet came at us through the door, then the soilder opened the door and pointed the gun at us.  When he saw us, I guess he thought the kids were mine.  He put his finger up to his mouth, smiled, and walked away.  That evening I was wandering around trying to figure out what I should do with these kids when I saw a woman pass; she was crying for her kids.  By some miracle the children were hers.  They all were so dirty and bruised up they hadn’t recognized each other at first.  The children were reunited with their mother.  I spent that evening in the basement of a blacksmith’s shop, hiding. 

I was fourteen when the war started, six years later I was twenty. The war finally ended.  Our family, my mother, father, brother, and some aunts and uncles were all living with my aunt. Her apartment was the only place any of us had, ten of us in two rooms. I had to find a job.  I found a job as an interpreter for the United States. This is where I met my husband.  After we married, we moved to the United States where I have lived ever since. 

I was, from the very beginning, in God’s hands.  Only thing I can say is trust the Lord, ask for His help, let Him guide you.  Wherever you go, you will be okay.  This trust is the only thing that saved me.  My biggest lesson was, learning to appreciate human life and cherish it, and live the way God wants you to. 

 

This oral history was written and composed by Elizabeth Scorse, Spring 2002.