大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer of the Stoke CSV Action Desk on behalf of Wilhelmina Slight- Metselaar and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

To produce some electricity we brought a bicycle with dynamo into the livingroom and one of us took it in turns to cycle so the others could read or sew. We made clothes of old dresses, two old ones made one new dress. My father was an optician and the shop had brown velvet curtains, which he took down and my mother made a dress of one curtain. It was warm, but very heavy and I hated wearing the brown velvet dress. Although there was a curfew, people still went out at nightime to collect wood from the bombed out houses or trees were chopped down and sawn into firewood for the small stove. We often went to bed when it got dark and did not get up until it was light. There was very little food - parents had to cook potato peelings, sugarbeet amd tulip bulbs. You had to take the poisonous piece out of the bulb first. We went to bed feeling very hungry, like having a big hole in your stomach which kept you awake and you also knew that there was no breakfast either. Soup kitchens were organised and that was the only food people were getting. We were given soup at school, at least it was warm, but not very nutritious.

For the rest of Wilhelmina's story please go to Chapter four of "What I Remember of the War in the Netherlands."

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