Brandon's Oma
Appearances
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I said, why did you do that? I was tiptoeing backwards, you know. Yeah. He says, I tried to get help. I said, you have to tell me to stop. But anyway.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. That was scary.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
How long is it going to be? When is it over? That's what I always said. But it was long, long, long. In a way, that day. Then my mom got kind of restless again. She says, they're throwing bombs now in our city. They're getting closer and closer and they're getting more and more, you know. So she says, you need to go to our friends in the Black Forest. We had friends in the Black Forest.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And it was safe there. They didn't bomb there, you know. And I said, Mom, don't send me away again, you know. I didn't want to go. But meanwhile, before she sent me anyway, We went to, like I said, looking where we get some food. And the siren went off and said, it's too late to go to Abanga where we want. We want a different place. Let's go home. I said, Mom, I'm hungry.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Why you want to hear an old lady's childhood experience?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know, let's get something to eat. And we go in our cellar. And we did. And there was another funny story. It was on the 10th of May, a day before my birthday. I said, oh, they sent me a birthday gift early.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And, well, we made it through this one. But afterwards, we found out that cellar we used to go to when we were out, that was supposed to be bomb-proof, okay? So they said. And we found out the bomb that came from the back in to the cellar and killed so many people. And we went there, of course, terrified. I remember that.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Went there and I found that baby, you know, and I grabbed that baby and I cleaned the sand and the dirt and everything out, you know. And the mother screaming for her babies. She had half of her face missing. I seen that like yesterday. And the baby died in my arms, you know. But There were no doctors, you know, hospitals, nothing. Everything was a mess.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So we had to tell the lady, we're okay, we got your baby, you know, just to get her calmed down, you know. And the rest of the bodies, they brought them to School areas or restaurants, and they lined them up and covered them, you know. And my brother was always gone, my dad. They had to help them stupid Nazis to build a wall. By the water, we lived right by the water, you see.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And they were put in like a safety wall or something, I don't know. So they were always gone. So we didn't know what happened to them. So we looked at everybody hoping we don't find them, you know. And, oh. Thank you so much. It's okay. And then it was, everything was filled up, they put the bodies up in trucks, just, you know, put them up in trucks. We don't know where they went or what.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And anyway, another day, another alarm, right, so we went back to, I think it was Arcelor, yeah. We heard commotions. There was an English plane was shut down over our city. And the parachute, the guy came down in our street, you know, where we lived. And, of course, some people, oh, there's one of them. You know how it was. It was war.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I was in Mannheim and I remember I was about six years old. I went to school. And everything was still quiet. So I don't know if I was in school for one or two years. I'm not sure. And then when the sirens went off more often, we had less in the school. But then they bombed the surrounding areas, so the school were closed. Then we had an organization in Mannheim where they send children.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It was not American. The English came in first. The English. And so my mom, she was more outspoken than I am. But she went over there and she said, you leave that young man alone. You know, she said, I got a son. And he's in Africa, in El Alamein.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He got a prisoner in El Alamein and then shipped to the States, right? And she tried to protect that young man. There were two SS guys right there, and they arrested my mom. They said, she's a country traitor. She was taken to the, I don't know where they were, you know, their offices or whatever. And they put a sign out with other people that she was a country traitor.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
But I'm jumping ahead there because meanwhile, there was more stuff going on me at Backdraft.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That's why I jumped ahead. I just thought about it because the English, they came. That's why they didn't have time to ship my mom out, see, because the Nazi was gathering. They took her off, you know. That's a little bit too far. Because I forgot the second trip to the Black Forest.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It's an area close to Switzerland. Okay. And they lived there, but they were good friends of ours. They moved there. And I felt good there because I knew them, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, it's a little city called Black Forest.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And so I went to school there, you know, and... Then my mom came to visit again, and she got sick. So... The Black Forest.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It's real pretty.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. So my mom got sick. She had gallbladder attack and they didn't have a doctor in that little town, you know. So they took her, but I would say, I don't know, what, four miles away to the hospital. She had surgery there and I walked, I think, I couldn't do it again. I don't think I could. I walked through the woods by myself, smelling the boars. You know what a boar is? The big pigs?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Pretty bad animal, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Very aggressive. When I smelled them, I was going just looking, you know, and see which tree can I climb, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
In a way, they were all nice. The hospital, they let me stay there because my mom, you know, and until she could travel. And then we took her back to the friends of ours, you know, but by train. And she stayed until she felt better. And then she said, honey, I got to go home. She brought her husband, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So she left and I said, okay, it was hard thinking she wasn't completely healed, you know. But I stayed a while and then I said, no, I got to go home, you know. I got to take care of her. And I did it again. I saved my money and I went on the train, hidden from Mannheim. And on the way to Mannheim, I heard sirens in the distance and the train stopped and they said, everybody out.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
go to the woods, there were a lot of woods, you know, because they used to target the bridges, the trains, you know, all this.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, yeah. So we had to stay there for a while till we got the clear to go back, you know. So by the time I reached Mannheim, we couldn't go into the what they call it, Bahnhof, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes, the train station, because they were bombed. So I had half of my ladder to walk, you know, to go home. And I was glad I went home because mom's wounds didn't look good, you know, they were infected. So I had to take care of my mom, clean the wounds, and just take care of her, you know. And then one day, the siren went off again. So I said, Mom, where are we going now?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We don't want to go to our cellar. It's getting pretty bad, you know. They're bombing a lot lately. So I said, there's an underground bunker across the bridge, you know. We live right by the Snegger River. And we thought we could make it good, but it was kind of late. So half at the bridge, my mom walked down. She couldn't walk. She said, I can't walk no more. I said, you have to.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
They want to get out of the danger areas. They send them away to safe places.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You've got to get up because we've got to make it, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I tried to pull up. Nobody helps you. They all run for their lives, you know. And we finally made it, but I'd seen already the bombs, you know. And it seems like I'll never forget it, going down the steps with my mom. Like, close the door, like they're coming right at us, you know, the sound of it and all this. So that went okay, I guess.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I already told you the story with that young man coming down.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, my brother, he was drafted to the army.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Hans.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was my oldest brother. He was 10 years older. You don't know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. And like I said, he was in Africa and then he got captured in El Alamein.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And first he came to the States. I forgot where he was. But he came to the States and he didn't have it as good, you know, in prison. But then he got transferred to England. And he had a mate. He was striving for the higher colonel or mayor or whatever he was. He was a striver. He loved it. He had a mate.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, when he was in Africa, we did, before he got captured, you know. That little bit we got, I'll never forget it, we always put a little bit of our food, not food, but candy or chocolate or something in his package, and we sent him real thin scarves because of the sandstorms they had, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, yeah. I know. They had same story. Yeah. Anyway, the other story was, where were we?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Right. And a little later on, like I said, my dad was never dead. My brother was never dead. It was just me and my mom.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes, they were forced to. And so we had to look after ourselves.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So, my mom said, you've got to, both of my brother, my youngest brother and myself. So, I was the first one to get picked. Of course, I was tiny, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Okay, my mom was born in 01.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, 1876, 1875.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No. But, oh, goodness. Then, yeah, like I said, my mom were there, whole person. There was 30, I got them all, yeah. And my dad came finally home. And we decided we'll go to the bunker that's closer to us because it was too far to go. because you couldn't wait to bomb. You know, you couldn't say, wait till we get there. It's impossible. So we went to the bunker by the water.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That's the upright bunker, the tall one, you know, supposed to be bomb safe. So me and my dad, we were going to get some food, and mom was already in the bunker, and my brother, I don't know where he was. So we went home, we got food, and on the way to the riverside, We heard the cannons, you heard the , you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. You can hear it and you don't know where it hits. And one of them came pretty loud and we went into the doorway, you know, just covered ourselves. But we had to cross the field to get to the bunker. And the English were across the river already by then, you see. So they were shooting guns and everything. So we were crawling on the floor, on the ground, getting to the bunker, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And they were shooting. I just... We made it somehow, and they already closed the bunker, you know, and we were banging on them steel doors, open the doors, we need to get in, you know. Finally, they decided it was us, you know, and we made it in. But that was really, really scary, really scary.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I really had good people. They took me in. They were rich people.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Telling you. So...
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, afterwards. Okay. When the British came across before they came across, they were right across the river, okay, when we went to the bunker, my dad and I. And my youngest brother, we didn't know that till afterwards, you know, he was always gone. The mayor from my city,
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Two other gentlemen and my brother, for some reason, they went in the boat and they went across the river, two with the white flag, of course, to give the city to, I don't know, surrender. And my brother forgot he had a knife in his side pocket, you know. And just before he got all the way across, he realized that, so he grabbed the knife and let it go in the water.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes. It was outside of France. Small town. I forgot the name of it. And I had a maid because they had only one son and he was a baker. Boy, the good cakes he brought home. And I really should have been happy there, but I wasn't because she wouldn't let me go see my friends, surrounding friends, you know. She wanted me to be more with her friends. And I got more and more homesick.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That knife?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And the Germans, of course, they disappeared from the riverfront, of course, right? Or my mom would have been shipped out. But she was in a time... where she was just lucky, you know? I forgot to tell you the story. When I was back, I was maybe eight years old, something like this, where I thought, what is going on, you know? getting people out of their apartments.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And a lot of Jews had stores and everything. I said, what's going on? You know, we didn't know what was going on. So they told the people they're going to send the Jews to a new colony where all the Jews get together their own, you know,
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And while they were gone, that's my clock.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. And while they were gone, they burned everything. I remember they torn furniture out of the windows. You know, it was terrible. There was a sight I'll never forget. You know, they shipped them out. We didn't know where they were going.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We did not hear about the concentration camps until the war was over. Honestly, we didn't know. I couldn't believe it. Matter of fact, later on, when I met Oprah, we went to a movie, the first movie we went, they showed concentration camps and all this. I was shocked. I was shocked. And I said, my mom would have been there too, you know, after all you go through. It was miserable.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It was not a good childhood, put it this way. And even my mom and my dad, I shouldn't say dad, but 25 years is too much different in a marriage. It was good in the beginning because she was young. He was still in his 50s. It was okay. But later on is when it started, you know, because my mom wanted a new dress later on and, you know, she wanted to look good.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
My dad was jealous as crazy because my mom was a good looking woman, you know. So there were all these fights and where was I? under the table, you know. So from a small kid on, it was, you know, we didn't have no graduations or stuff like that, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, I was 18 and a half when I met her dad, Joe.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, he was from Laredo.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Frio, really. You know where Frio is?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, Dilley.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, my brother and I, we went to, what do you call it, a guest house, we called it, okay, restaurant. And they started first, the guy would play the harmonica.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And we'd go there on a Saturday, you know. But my brother didn't let me go alone, and I was almost 19.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I met really my husband's friend first. You know, they were all in the same company and he was a darn good looking guy, I tell you. He was, he likes to fight. Whenever a fight going on in the place, he was involved and I didn't like that, you see. So I said, no, that's not the guy for me. And one day he brought Dad with him, Oprah. And now...
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We were talking when he was gone, you know, and I said, yeah, I know he wants me to be his girlfriend, but I don't like it when somebody gets involved in somebody else's fights, you know. And he said, yeah, he's kind of a fighter, you know. We were talking. He said, well, you want to go to a movie with me next week?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. That's funny. Oh, I'm telling you.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know, I don't remember. I think the first movie, one of the movies from Concentration Camp. I believe so. That could be.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And my mom came and visit, and everything was still okay then. But then they mentioned to adopt me. That was it. I saved my money up. I had an allowance every week from them. And one day I went on the train and I went home. I left everything behind.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Harsh first date.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I didn't speak English. Oh, my God.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That guy, no good. So I said, okay, I go to English school, you know. And I did for a couple of weeks. And every time I came home and I learned something and he said, what did you say? I couldn't understand.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And he says, I don't know what you're saying. And I said, why I go to school for? You know, I stayed another week or so. And every time I come home, he says, I don't know. It was a school English, and he just couldn't understand it, you know. And I said, forget it. So I quit. And I said, now you're going to teach me, you know. It's amazing how much you can communicate when you have to. Oh, yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Isn't it true? Right? Depends on what you're communicating, I guess.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
The chanclas. I drove my husband crazy with TV. Every time we watched TV, I'd say, what she says, what she said. You know, I'd ask questions. That's how I learned. But by me trying to learn how to speak English, my kids never kept to German because, you know, I wanted to learn English. So I wanted him to keep speaking English. So I learned.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, they understand words, you know. Especially the ones they're not supposed to say. That's the worst. Well.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, there was, when we checked, my brother and I, you know, the front were okay. Then there is a, what they called it, between the back house and this, there's not a garden, but a... A common area. Yeah. And there was a bomb. And our apartment, we lived on the second floor. The walls were that much, we could look up to the third floor. It was just, you know. So we were lucky, I didn't think.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, they wanted to adopt me and that scared me. So I took off.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We were very lucky, I tell you. I don't know. I have so much more I know, but I can't think of it.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know, when the first English came in, right? We were... on the second floor. I was in the corner, I was scared stiff, you know, because they were with guns, of course. And they came, looked at the apartment, you know, and my mom tried to say,
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I think they didn't pay too much attention. They took all our jewelry, you know, and stuff, the English. And I... I thought I'd die when she did that. I said, Mom, I hope they didn't hear you. But she was scared because she was taken. I don't know what she was thinking. Six years under.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, I was a little older maybe. Eight, nine, I would say, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
They were scared. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, you're just covering it down. It was really scary.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know, I'm going to tell you something. I shouldn't say that, but I say it. First, Hitler was okay. When he first started, he was okay. We had food, everything, everything great.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. A very good economy. Everything was great. And then it started slowly, you know? He got greedy, in other words. Then he wanted to take other countries like France and Poland and all this. He went slowly. He wanted more and more and more. He got greedy. And then when they went into Russia… That's when they made a big booboo. Because the German army were not prepared for that cold weather.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
The Russians were used to it. So most of these people, the soldiers died. They froze. That's when he lost it.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Or was it... No, I think it was... Oh, don't quote me on that. I know, I remember a lot of people lined up and he came in the big Jeep or whatever it was. A Volkswagen.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, kind of, yeah. And my mom could have gotten in trouble there. She couldn't keep her mouth shut, you know. I said, Mom? It seems to be a recurring theme.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. And then I didn't stay too long with my friends. I would say maybe six, eight months. Okay. And then I went back home.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, gee, butola, you better do what the others do or you'll be picked up. You know, that was before she got picked up, you know? Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I remember... One of the German army. I don't know if it was Goebbels? Goebbels?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Or what's the other one? Hitler? One of them was a good guy, you know?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Rommel? What was it? Yeah, one of them. The good one.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It was Goebbels, Goebbels, or... Or Rommel, one or the other.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And my mom was so mad.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
What do you mean?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. I said, they're singing my song.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
with your your two brothers were they when they got they got drafted correct yes only one got drafted okay my oldest brother oldest brother got drafted and then your other one still had to do what the what they call it ss the nazis told him to do the ss to help build the war the wall by the river and all kinds of stuff we never know where they went this would have been like gestapo yeah
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Of course, the Nazis were gone by then, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. Matter of fact, I wish I had a letter from the governor, you know, what a brave and young man he was, you know, to do this. I don't know if I ever find it. I have it somewhere, you know. And they even wrote to me while I was here, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Alone.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. And my father, he wasn't scared of nothing.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Of course I was afraid. And look, I was still a young kid, right? And the first black man I'd seen, I was hiding. I'd never seen a black man, you know, at the time. I never did. And we were scared of them, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes. I was every day on the train station. I said, I want to go home, but I don't have enough money, you know. So I said, I'm going to save all my money on my allowance. And one day I did it. I just went, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, you hear stories, they're going to rape you, they're going to do, you know, stuff like this. And then later on, the GIs, the English, told Candace to the kids, you know, that was later on. And that was something. I'll never forget seeing the black guys. God. How did you get black? Just confusion. Yeah. Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, no. I was 20, I think. 20?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, he was in Germany.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Opa Opa. Oman or Prague.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, there was another big storm. Uh-oh. I may not know this one. Was there another one of his friends you'd like to fight?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
It's true.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We wanted to get married, right? I said, I'm not going to the States, not being married, see? But he said he's got to go to the States first. because of his father or something, I don't know, something, he probably was sick or something, I forgot. And I said, oh, there we go again. He goes to States, he never come back, right? That's what you think.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I went to work, and one day, off work, I got out, there was my husband, you know? The one my husband did. I said, I can't believe it, you did come back. He said, of course, I told you I'd be back.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was in the States maybe, I would say three weeks, four weeks, something like that.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, I thought he'd never come back.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
But...
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I'm learning some family history today. Yeah, no, I've been to work and like I said, he came and he surprised me at work, you know. And then he asked me, you want to marry me? And I looked at him and I said, I got to think about it. I was a bad girl. I got to admit, I wasn't teasing.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Anyway, when I went home, she was pretty upset, my mom. And I said, don't send me back, please. You know, I don't want to go back. I want to be with you. So that was number one. Then they were bombing Mannheim for the first time. And we had, at the time, we had a room in the underground bunker. Every night we spent the night there.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I did.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I told him, I got to think about it, you know? And he said, why I told you? He flew back out here. He's like, I'm here. So? I don't care. You know what I did? He was on CQ. You know what CQ is?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Um.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was there. So I used the towel around my face and I called his number. And he answered and I said, oh, I heard about you. You want to go to the movie with me? I pretended I was somebody else, okay.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We are the same. We are the same people.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No. He said, oh, I'm sorry.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, he threw me off. And then when he came home, he told me about it. He said, would you believe some girl called me? Oh, he knew.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, it was... Oh, then I started lying to him, okay? Wait, what? I said, I don't know. I said, you don't know? I have a kid. I told him I had a kid. Just testing him? What kind of tests are these?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I just came back to Germany for it. You know what he said? He said, really? You didn't tell me that in the beginning, you know, but can I see the kid? That's when I got in trouble. I didn't have the kid. I finally had to admit that I was, you know, testing him. I finally told him, yeah, I'll marry you.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You put him through hell. Yes, I did.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I was a teaser.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I'm just a girl. There were so many guys who wanted to go out with me. Elmo is a hottie.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That's what I used to say. You know, good looking guys, right? And I said, okay, I'll meet you over there. Wherever, on the corner. And then I went over there and see if he really showed up and then I go home. I didn't know. You were breaking hearts. I did. You broke so many hearts. Just for fun. One day I got caught. Doing what?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Before we were married, okay.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was not a fighter like some of the guys I met. But the only thing, I was a good dancer when I was young, you know. He couldn't dance. He was dancing for nothing. So I had to teach him how to dance, you know. He stepped on my feet all the time. But he learned the poker and, you know, a couple of things. And if somebody, your daddy were very cheerless when somebody asked me to dance, right?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was okay the first time, but he came back a second time. Now he's a fighter. She's not dancing right now.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Daytime we went home. But sometimes the siren went off, so we go to different cellars, you know, whatever we were close by. And that one day we were looking for food because we were rationed at the time. And we had about half a little bread a week, you know? We even eat, I hate to say it, horse meat. It was pretty good at the time. And we had nothing, right?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We left Germany, like you said, in 72, right? That was way later. You're talking about at first. Oh, the first time. First time was 50, let me see, 50. I'll say 53. 53?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, around there. We went to Oklahoma. But meanwhile, we had a couple of kids, you know, after we were married. We got married, I was 21. All grown up.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Right. I had real kids. So my oldest, Henry and Robert, were born in Germany. Okay. But we had problems getting married. You never believed why. We wanted to get married by church. My church were baptized in Germany. Our preacher wouldn't marry us because he didn't have a baptism paper.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yes. And then I had to get a paper from the court that I'd never been in jail or in trouble, right?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That's wild. Yes. He sent to Texas that he get a birth certificate, right? But we had a date set when we want to get married. Everything was arranged and paper never came in, you know? So we got married in a way, but not in church. We got married in the
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
In Germany, yeah. And so we never got married by truck, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, okay. But then... what I wanted to say, when he had to go back, right, I wasn't ready to go with him because my papers didn't fall together from the court. I was from, you know, and so he went. To the States. And I stayed with the kids, two kids I had then. And talking about scared, I couldn't speak English. And I had to go on a certain time. I had to go over to meet him.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I was tempted not to go, to be honest with you. I was scared to death, you know. So I went in a way.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Right.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I arrived in New York. He always tell me, he said, if I cannot make it to pick you up in New York, ask for the Red Cross to help you. And I had this in my head. So I came to New York. I stood there looking for him. He wasn't there. I said, oh my gosh.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
From the Red Cross.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
They didn't notify him on time to catch the plane to New York in time, you see? So that's why he went there. So I said, well, he told me to go to the Red Cross. Where's the Red Cross, you know?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. So... He said, go to the bus, take you to the Red Cross. So I went in the bus, suitcase, two kids, and then there were other girls that got married, you know, and one French girl I'll never forget. She said, oh, you're traveling by yourself? I said, yeah, my husband couldn't make it, and blah, blah, blah. And she said, where are you going?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I said, he told me to go to the Red Cross, they will help me. She said, you're in the wrong bus. I was in the wrong bus. So I had to take the kids again, suitcase, and go to the other bus that was in front.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
She spoke English. She could speak good English.
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No, I didn't even know the money. The guy on the airport... you know, that had my luggage. I said, oh my God. So I grabbed my money and I just put the hand. Not to the day I know what he took.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Now, she told the bus driver, please tell them to get off, you know. So I got off. It was coming down rain. You can imagine, with two kids. One little rascal that liked to run off, right?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Let me see. Henry, he was about, I don't know, two years old. And the other one was still a baby, you know. And a big suitcase, you know. I was open, but I looked like a wet rat. Anyway, we got to the Red Cross.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. So, where was I?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We didn't know it was closed, you know. So that French girl happened to be there. And she says, well, we got to wait until they open up. And I'm pretty sure they give you room upstairs to clean up, you know, and get the kids changed. And they were screaming. Robert was screaming, my baby. And he wanted milk, of course. And they were used to warm milk. Where do I get milk? I couldn't get milk.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh my goodness. And then I want to change the kids in the restroom. I lost the key to the suitcase. So I had to break the suitcase open, right? And so I changed them, you know. Meanwhile, the Red Cross opened up and that French girl helped me a little bit. She asked if they have milk or can get milk for the baby, you know. And they did.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I warmed the milk in the bathroom because they were used to warm milk, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I'm amazed at myself.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, don't ask me for this.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So... How do I close the suitcase? You know? And I said, oh, I took the belt off. I had to wear it. And I strapped it around the suitcase. And then the lady from the Red Cross said, come on. There's a room upstairs. You can stay there till your husband comes. You can let the kids rest and all this. We made it up to the stairs, right? And I heard my husband's voice. He said, this is not my wife.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And I turned around, looked down, there were stairs, and there was a French girl.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I don't remember the years. All right.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And then she said, if you're looking for your wife, she's right up there, you know. And we were still soaking wet, you know. And he came up and we changed, like I said, the kids and I changed and all this good stuff. We stayed there for a couple of hours.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, come on.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I don't know 100% the age either, you know. Yeah, you're good. But pretty close. So that day... We went to the bunker and there was a bomb. Matter of fact, one of the bombs hit the bunker, but it didn't injure nobody. Okay. And it was pretty close, but it was okay. And I don't know if I should tell you that story. We had bunk beds, two, four, six bunk beds in that room.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We had only two hours, I believe, and then we had to leave. You know, it was just temporary. So we were all tired. So my husband went into the hotel room, and it was so amazing. The bed had a box on the back. I'll never forget it. You put a quarter in, and the bed goes... I said, great. I can put the kids there. They're going to sleep.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, yeah, that's a good story, too. But I'm not finished with it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Go on with the bed story.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I'm excited. I've never seen that before.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And then the next day, next morning, we were relaxed. We went to Trans Station.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So we went in the train to Oklahoma. And halfway the train stopped and let everybody out to eat. And there was another shock for me. I was looking at a couple, you know, one was white, one was black, you know, it was so new for me. And the waitress said, you can come in here, it's only for whites. I said, excuse me? They can come in here. I didn't say that, but I was thinking that.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
There's still segregation. What year was that? Early mid-50s. I was in shock. She said, you can come here and you got to go in that place where all the blacks go, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, well. It was half-based from New York to Oklahoma. Well, it was one of those states.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Never seen that. I couldn't believe it. They had to eat outside because you don't want to separate from her, you know. That was crazy. And then we got to Oklahoma.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Fort Sill, Oklahoma, yeah. Lawton, matter of fact, Lawton, Oklahoma. So right away, they didn't have quarters for us. So we rented a house on the outside, had a tornado bunker and everything. Boy, the works. And then we moved to a little town. I forgot the name of it too. And I learned how to drive, right? I couldn't drive then. And my husband, he had no patience.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Every time I did something with a stick, you know, I did something wrong, he, don't you get it? You know, I said, okay. So one day he was at work, and I went in the car. I still learned myself, right? So I went in the car. Honey, I am proficient at stick driving.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Car's smoking now. And I drove. I mean, I put it in the back. Sure, I chirped. And forward too. And I said, I hope I don't get in the garage. You know, I'm in the garage. But I did pretty good. And I said, hmm, I'm going to visit my girlfriend. She was halfway between London and, you know, that little town. And I did great. And I drove, you know. was fine, but I had a problem.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Every time I stopped, the motor shut off. You'd stall it.
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So I said, oh, well, I'll just start it again right now.
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Of course.
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Yeah. I went to the friend I met, you know. And my husband had to go by the highway to go home, you see. And he seen the car, you know. And he stopped. And he said, who drove the car over here? And I said, they said, what car?
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There was my mother on the bottom. I was on the second. My brother was right on the second one and the other one. And friends of ours were with us. They were good friends. And we always left the door open, but like this, so we get a little light into the room.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, there's another story. Then, anyway, we stayed there for a while, and then when we got orders to go to Panama, right, we went to Panama. No matter of fact, this first time I drove the ship. The other one was another ship. I don't think. Anyway, so Oklahoma, well, we got there and I died almost with heat. They had no air conditioning.
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They had a giant fan and in them years I had migraines, you know, and that wasn't very good with the fan, you know. But, again, I learned how to drive. to the commissary. It was up the hill, right?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
In Panama? Panama. And I drove up, everything good. My girlfriends were with me, and we had a babysitter then, you know. And they were guard house before you get into the commissary, you know. And we had to show our ID, and Okay, I got my ID, you know, and I was on the guard house and I said, oh my God, the car is going backwards. I told the guard, I said, I'll be right back.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Even the gods. Oh, gee. Oh, my God. It was so hot over there. Oh, my God.
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And six months of rain. That was terrible. And the crabs, they had crab season. I never seen anything like it. The whole... Everything, patio, everything was full of crabs. The fire department came and, you know, yeah, that's bad.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And they go in your tires, you know, when you carve a part. They go in your tires.
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No, my husband went to Vietnam, Korea, and I had to take care of all the kids by myself. That was not easy, you know. And I had to take the car to buy my husband in Germany. I mean, yeah, Germany, you know. That was hard.
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I always had to take it on... How do you explain that?
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Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And, oh, Lord, it was hard times, you know. It was always hard times, but still funny when you think about it.
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It was my dad's family. I never met. I never met. Because the war were going on, they built a wall, you know. And for me, as an American, my husband said, you're not going to go. You're not coming back.
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My father, for me, it was too dangerous, you know, being married to an American.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. I still remember it.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah, the light on the outside.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You have lived quite the life, ma'am. Oh, my goodness. I tell you. There's probably more. I can't remember more than that.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I think I've got that, you know, that I still got in my mind.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
acutely.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I used to pick him up from school, right? Yeah. And I'd take him home, and he didn't want to go home. He wanted to stay with Oma.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I don't know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
The fun time I had in my life is, I think, when we had all the campers. My son had a camper, they had camper, we had a camper, and we parked kinda. you know, all together. And that's when Brandon, every morning, disappeared, came to the toilet.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, there were lights. Okay, there is lights. Okay. But because we didn't want to sleep with the light on, we left the door open to get light from the hallway. So I woke up. Do you ever smell somebody that smokes a lot? Yes, Connor.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I know. That was so funny. Oh, my goodness. Then we got born in Germany. She's a German too.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I never thought I would tell you because I'm not a, how do you say? Storyteller? She can talk, but I can't.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, like a preacher in church. Charismatic, yeah. He said, don't you want to tell your story? I said, what? I said, no, my daughter can talk, not me.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, like I said, I see everything like it was, but I can't think of dates or how old I was, you see.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Oh, yes.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Well, I show you guys. and nice have met you. Okay? Pretty nice to meet you.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Even you, Cody. Cut it a little bit. And he got the glasses on. I couldn't tell on one picture. He said, wait a minute, where's my... That was Eli's fault, by the way.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
How deep of a picture was that you showed me? And I had to look twice. I said, which one is mine?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No. No. I mean heavy. And I woke up and there was a tall guy standing right in front of my bed. I was uncovered, okay. I had pajamas on and I thought, I was scared, of course I was a young girl, you know, and I didn't want to scream, so I just moved back from the bed to the wall and I tried to wake my brother up.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That they're very lucky today, what they got. You know? Really. And a lot of kids today do not appreciate what they got. You know? We appreciate every little thing. Let me tell you, we were hungry. And when we get our ration for the week, depends how many the family was, when the potatoes run out, we peeled all the potatoes and we fried them. There was another meal, you know, for us.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I forgot something. Yeah. When the British came in, you know, and they were still with their rifles and all this. But by then we were so hungry, all the stores were gone. You know, I'm sorry, I have a cramp. You okay? A cramp. A cramp.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And so I said, well, let's go to the stores. They were bombed. We'll find some food, you know, canned food or something, you know. So me, my brother, we went across the street. There were big, what do you call it, not a warehouse, but where they sell everything. Like a general store. Yeah, big store. And they also had food. story and that.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We went in there and there was that English guy with a machine gun, you know, and he just looked at us and we looked at him and we kept on going, you know, hoping he don't shoot us, you know. But he didn't, he understood I guess, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
They do not. They don't know how good they got it, you know? They're not appreciated. I agree fully. Oma? Yeah.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You're kidding.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Wow.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
That's not, that's Brandon.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Certain picture, not so much, but, you know, he's got some malaria at me.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Cody, you want to clothe us out, you beautiful son of a gun? I hope. I live a little longer so I can enjoy all you guys. I've been saying that. All my life it was hard. I had migraines for 25 years and had to take care of five kids. My husband was always gone because I was pretty confident with him.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
No, I'm sorry, continue. So I enjoy life a little bit. I'm grateful that I can live still on my own in my age, you know, that I'm grateful for. She wants me moving with her, I know, but as long as I can do for myself, I want to be here. And I think everyone feels that way, don't you think?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I'd try. I mean, I got my mom.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Four days ago. Oh, happy belated birthday.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Did my grandson call me? No. I did.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Did he call you?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You take care of yourself. Oh, all right. And I really enjoyed you guys, okay? We enjoyed hanging out with you. It's been a pleasure.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I never thought I can do that, talking to a dude. She said, you can't. You killed it. Cody, you want to close this out?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
We love you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And my brother said, ah, there she goes again, she got a nightmare, because I did have nightmares sometimes, you know, from the war. And I said, please, I beg somebody. No, he meant to close the door, see? And it was pitch black. And that's what really scared me. And I said, please, somebody get up and turn the light on. There's somebody in here, you know?
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Like I said, my brother said, she's got nightmares. But the lady that we know, she said, I get up here. She says, I turn the light on. So, he was laying on a bench in the room, right? Like he was sleeping, but he wasn't sleeping, you know, I know better.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And they called the manager from the underground bunker and the preacher and they came in and they said, sir, you don't have a place to stay or you need, you know, He wouldn't answer, like he was sound asleep. I said, he's not sleeping. He was just standing here, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And so my dad, the guys, they were across the hall, my dad and other guys, they came over and they say, they got and shook him, you know, and says, look, you need some place to stay or what is it, you know. And all of a sudden he jumped up and he run out of the room and he said something in a different language. We didn't know what it was. But he had a German uniform on. But it was not complete.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He only had a jacket on, you see. And he went right, we were right next to the exit and the entrance. He took off and we never seen him again.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I don't really... I don't know what, like, you know, something like this.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
He was kind of, yeah. He was not sure.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Yeah. He had a real bad smell, like a real heavy smoker. And maybe drinking, who knows? But anyway, from that day on, they closed the doors in the bunker so nobody could go in and out, you know, after a certain time.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Maybe I'm a little older, maybe 10.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
I think I was almost 15. 14, I would say. 14, okay.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
Right.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
You know, when the sirens went off, I said, I was going to which place? Depends if we were out looking for food, of course. My mom and I, we used to go to the farmers and trade clothes or Sheets, stuff, you know, for food, because we didn't have enough food, you know. And, well, anyway, my brother and I, we used to look if our house was still standing, you know.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
So we walked home, of course, looking. The houses were burning, you know, that nothing came down on us. And we came to this giant hole. I'll never forget that. giant hole. And I said, what's this? And the closer we got, we seen that big bomb. I mean, big one. It was not exploded, you see. I don't know what they say it in English, but we say . It didn't explode.
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213 - Growing Up In Germany During WWII ft. Brandon’s Oma | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 213
And my brother, smart brother, he was only a year older than I. He said, don't move. And I was freezing there. What do you want me to do, you know? He took off. He left me standing there.