Maria Mayer

Once the divided us up into men and women. We were naked, completely naked. I was 11 years old, so I already had small breasts and I was so ashamed. We had to strip naked, I was holding my little sister on my arm. And then we had to cross over, naked, across these boards into a room. My mother thought: “And now they’ll gas us.” We didn’t know what was going to happen. But it was just delousing, there was vermin everywhere. And there we were divided into men and women.

The soldiers left ammo and weapons behind in the woods. The woods were like a second home for us children, so we found and collected everything. We played in the woods saying: “We’re playing at war.” My two brothers, my cousin and me, I was ten at the time, in 1945. We played with weapons and ammunition. There were these huge boulders in the woods, enormous. We placed one shell on the boulder and hit it with another. There was a cloud of smoke and fire, you couldn’t see a thing. I thought to myself: “I’m here alone, nobody else is here.” Then the smoke was gone and I could see again. So we played like that and we were alright. Then we found a phone, these little boxes that turned and cut wires. I had to hold the wires together so my brothers could use the phone. I could feel the current, so I dropped the wires. They smacked my bottom for letting go. They said: “If you won’t hold it, you can’t come with us tomorrow.” And so I held them again. They often beat me up, but I didn’t give up because I wanted to be around, I kept holding the wires over and over again while they were telephoning. So that’s how we used to play, no harm came to us, it was wonderful. It didn’t even occur to us that we were risking an accident. Our parents didn’t know and we didn’t say anything. In the evening we would put all the things in our hiding place.

I ate my first banana at age sixteen, it was a gift. One lady asked me: “Would you like a banana?” I blushed, but said “yes” and put it in my pocket. And she asked me: “Aren’t you going to eat the banana?” and I started crying. “Why are you crying? she asked me. “I’m so ashamed, I don’t know what a banana is. I don’t know, am I supposed to eat it just like that?” And she peeled it for me and I ate it. And I thought: “Good God, this is delicious! I’ve never eaten anything like it. Delightful.”