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It was in Switzerland, December 18th, 1938, on a Sunday late afternoon. The snow fell quietly for the first time that winter and covered the world with a sparkling blanket. The Christmas lights tried to spread joy into the eyes and hearts of people, people who were afraid of what the future would hold in store from them. But there I was a bundle of joy in my mother’s arms. She just gave birth to me, a little girl, that she named Edith. She said I looked exactly like my dad, and they both were so very proud of me.

Hitler was in command, and war started all around us. My dad was called into the army, to do active duty and defend our Country. My Parents were poor, and my Dad made a commitment to his mother, many years before he got married, a commitment which he would never break. And because of that, my Mother was forced to live with my Grandmother and some of my dad’s siblings. She had a terrible life, but no shoulder to cry on.

My Mother, Paula Wymann (born 1912), lost her dad at the age of 13 (he had throat cancer). Her Mother died of blood poisoning one year later, and four weeks after her mother’s Funeral one of her brothers got killed in a work-related accident. She now was an orphan and had to live with her brother Franz. He was nine years older than she was, but later got married and started his own Family.

My Mother now had to stand on her own two feet, so she rented one bedroom (not an apartment, only a room). Her other two brothers, Willhelm and Josef, were 12 and 10 years older than she was and had their own Families. At the age of 15, Mom started working at the Chocolate Factory in Kilchberg (ZH). That is where she later got to know Berta Zellweger, and those two became best friends. Berta took my mother home once in a while, and that is how my mother got to know my dad. My dad was Berta’s older brother, Jakob Zellweger.

My mother brought me home from the Hospital and soon after that had to go back to work at the factory, putting me into the day care center, which the company provided.

I had only one outfit to wear. She picked me up every day after work, took me home, washed the outfit I wore by hand, dried it overnight so that it once again was clean the next morning. There just wasn’t any money.

Before I was two years old I ended up in the Hospital twice with a bad case of Pneumonia. I was not supposed to make it, but I pulled through both times. They tell me that I was walking when I was one year old, but could hardly crawl by the age of two, having been sick for so long.

It was on April 6th, 1941, my dad was still doing active duty in the military, when my Mother gave birth to my brother Heinz. Heinz was born with only one leg (two feet but one leg). My Mother was very weak from all the hard work. She was released from the Hospital still having a fever, but she was unable to stay longer because of financial reasons, plus it was war time. She brought my brother home but was so weak she could not nurse him, and they did not send any formula along to feed the Baby.

The train ride home from the Hospital was uncomfortable, and the walk to the apartment building even worse. It normally was a 30-minute walk, but in her condition,it took two hours. It was a big relief when she finally made it home. Nobody was there to help her; everybody was either at work or in the military. She packed the little bundle into his crib and went back to the store to get some formula.

Needless to say, that made her sicker yet. It took only twoweeks and she was back in the Hospital. The Doctors, with the help of antibiotics, got her fever down, but then told her she had contracted TB and would not be able to go home anymore. They did send her to a TB Sanatorium in Davos, but there she got sicker and developed water in her chest. For many nights she was wheeled into the bathroom because nobody thought she would survive the night, and the nurses did not want to have her roommates watch her die.

My Godmother, who is my dad’s sister, Berta, took me in. She and her husband and my parents had a double wedding on July12th 1938. Her husband, Arthur, was born and grew up in Switzerland, but his Mother was a German citizen, and because of that, he wasn’t a Swiss Citizen either. He either had to go to prison or had