In an old abandoned restaurant, there was a big room upstairs. This restaurant had been closed for years and there was nothing interesting about it. One day though, this changed.
Up and down the cobblestone street that ran in front of our house people were pulling little handcarts with huge bags in them. The street had turned white from a substance trickeling out of the huge bags. I had to find out what this was. So I went outside to check out this mystery. Getting up close.. there was no doubt that this mysterious substance was sugar, ordinary sugar. Sugar? Yes…. 200 lbs sacks of sugar, at least 1 or 2 of those in each of the little carts.
People were laughing, talking, running back and forth, huge excitement all over the place. Of course I had to find out more. It turned out that someone.. I never found out who.. but someone had used this old resaurant’s big room for storing 200 lbs sacks of sugar from floor to ceiling.
Wow.. people went absolutely nuts, can you blame them?
Food.. for free. Under the Nazi-Regime.. someone had hoarded this, no one ever found out who did this, or why. But someone discovered this stash, the rest is easily explained..
Quickly Brunhilde and I got our little cart and we headed for the sugar stash. Mom didn’t want us to. She was leery of what was going on. We understood this, but the temptation was way bigger than her objections.
Brunhilde and I waded through the, by now ,white crunchy streets to get ‘our share’.. as we would call it.
Finally we managed to get through all the people, all that sugar, to that big room. We managed to put one of those sacks into our little cart and off we went.
People cleaned that stash out within hours.
This all happened right after the war was over, I was 11 at the time. Our farmers were unable to deliver their milk to the cities because of the general upheavel. No transportations, no buyers, so the milk would go bad quickly and our farmers gave it away to the villagers as quickly as they could. This meant we had 2 things. Milk and sugar.
Frau Dollinger, one of the families who were escapies from a german east bordertown stood in the kitchen making bon bons out of sugar and milk. In fact.. this is what everyone was doing. The whole village smelled like candy. Everyone I knew was making candies, what a sweet life that briefly was. Should we have eaten our veggies instead? Tongue in cheek here, right? We ate what we had, and we had milk and sugar.. so that’s what we ate. This is by far my most pleasant memory..and to me, it’s worth talking about it. Many people from Brachwitz will remember this; The unforgettable “sugar -days” in Brachwitz !
It is always amazing at how people can find great joy in the midst of a harsh and stark existence. The brutal effects and aftereffects of war still doesn’t dim the human spirit…it still rises. Somewhere and somehow the smallest thing, the most insignificant thing, becomes an “unforgettable sugar-day” providing a spark to continue on. Thanks, Addie.
David 😉 it never fails, your encouragement is so appreciated.. and surely, I will discover more sugar.. and who knows.. even chocolate memories ;))