@hersuit - How dare you - of course, my fault for being so open. Incidentally my mother would not have been the only one suffering such a fate - and remaining normal throughout all that the war years 'provided' - she was/is my hero.
Even though You are abusive I will honour my mother with an explanation. Believe me I was shocked to my bones, when she told me this in the last year of her life, in hospital. She has been dead now for many years, I have no brothers, nor sisters, so I can tell.
Firstly, I left Austria aged 20 - and had already been working in England for 1 year, returned home, was going to go to France next to learn the language, but re-met my boyfriend and we decided to emigrate, because the big world beckoned, also Europe seemed very unsafe with nuclear war a real threat. Swiss and other building codes in Europe at the time specified that each new home
had to have an atomic bunker/cellar, in case of nuclear war. My Swiss relatives lived in such a housing complex, but by the time we visited them, about 10 years later, the former nuclear bunker had been converted into an ordinary cellar, containing a supply of good wine and serving as a place for my brother-in-law's hobby as amateur photographer - he developed his photos in there. The world - or rather Europe - had breathed a sigh of relief.
My parents got married during a period in Austria which was dominated by firstly a churchy hierarchy (Dollfuss), (and later a pre-Nazi regime, after Dollfuss was assassinated); so when my parents got married in the early 1930s, birth control of any sort was illegal, no condoms, no creams, abortion was illegal (my Mum's doctor was Jewish who always pleaded with her for the life of the child, before performing the operation) - their living accommodation was simply a storage room for coal and had piping from the adjacent school's heating going through, they had to keep their front door open in winter so they would not be poisoned. - I saw it many years later, only heating by then was electric - it was a small storage room next to a large school room. No place for a child. My Dad had no job, my mother was the concierge and scrubbed the floors of the richer tenants - I even remember at times riding on her back whilst she was scrubbing. The landlord was Jewish, he and a number of other Jewish tenants left for America during the Hitler years and a flat became available, hence I was born. The landlord returned, got back his property and then tried to sue my parents, my mother in particular, because she had been his employee, but it was thrown out of Court - I still remember her indignation at the audacity of that man. I went to the same school, it was a commercial college, and remember this old man on occasion being out on the stairs leering at us teenagers, when school was out. The former school is now a pizza parlour.
You people have no idea what chaos human beings can survive, in my case, or rather my mother's case, she became stronger. She was an amazing woman, had the usual health problems of aching joints etc., was a little heavy when older, but was never hysterical etc., but despite a drunken husband (weekends only) she always managed to be calm even humorous, make decisions, found food when it was scarce, had a job all her life, even kept a booklet in which she entered her expenses, planned purchases - I was amazed, when i found this after her death - and made me ncie dresses. From when I was small, I remember long foot marches across broken bridges, makeshift steps going down into the water, bridging the breaks, riding on top of trains (Russian soldiers in the trains, passengers on the roof) to go into the country-side to the farmers to find food . . . she was a country girl originally and still had 'connections'.
Until the men of this world decide that they will leave their warlike nature behind, they will always have a need to control everything under purview, including women.
To me the American discussion about abortion, the craziness of their various religions, is a sign that things are going very wrong over there; they are a symptom of sickness and decline. We better all look out.
Apologies to anyone who might find my post offensive - it is the truth, and I have always been hesitant to tell, as people think me 'classy' - I was, still am pure working class.
Women are the victims as well as the survivors of war, maybe,
by our tendency to hero worship, also the enablers of men who are war-like! We need to get to know ourselves better; both: men and women.
Taurisk
