CARE Package
Berlin, Spring 1947, Age Twelve
My main responsibility was to stand endlessly in line for food rations. I was the logical one to be given this ongoing job since Grandma was elderly and weak, Mom was occupied with the household, and Peter was too young to be trusted with the family's irreplaceable ration coupons. Unfortunately I had troubles with fainting spells while standing in line for hours because of the lack of enough nourishment — and I was always hungry. This was extremely embarrassing to me, though people were kind and understanding, and sometimes they let me go to the head of the line, especially if they knew me. At times Mom or Grandma would come and relieve me if I had been gone for too many hours.
One day in the spring of 1947, Grandma received a notice in the mail telling her to go to a certain place on a specific date and pick up a CARE package from America. We did not even know what a CARE package was, but upon mentioning it to friends, we quickly found out. We also had several offers from friends wanting to be present when we had the package in our possession and opened it, or to come along and help us pick it up. This was not because people expected to get a share of it. Everyone accepted that sharing food during that particular time was not customary, and certainly not expected. These offers were out of curiosity — for having the chance to see that food exists, somewhere — and what that food from another country might look like.
I accompanied Papa to a warehouse somewhere in Berlin and we picked up this huge, heavy (about twenty-five pounds) package. Knowing that it contained precious food, we guarded it with our lives on the train and streetcar trip home.
The CARE package had been sent to Grandma Stanneck who was one of the oldest of ten children, by the youngest, her sister Martha, who lived in the United States. Aunt Martha had emigrated to America as a young girl in 1929 and eventually settled in New Jersey. While Grandma and her sister had not been able to keep in contact with each other during the war years, Aunt Martha now remembered her siblings and the privations they would be suffering.
After getting the package home, all five of us gathered around it while Papa set out to open it. This turned out to be quite a job despite the many tools he owned. The first CARE packages then were military rations for soldiers who were encircled by the enemy, and the boxes were made to withstand being dropped from aircraft. First there were metal bands to break. The tightly sealed and waxed heavy cardboard box proved to be quite an obstacle. When we thought we had “made it,” we found that the large box contained four smaller ones which were equally as tough and as difficult to pry open. It seemed like hours later when finally all the goodies surfaced. There were foods such as raisins, which the adults had forgotten even existed. Peter and I did not know what they were. Then there were other dried fruits, small cans of meats, cheeses, crackers and breads, as well as dessert bars, and other strange foods which we did not know at all. One of those was peanut butter, another was chewing gum. All cans and packages were individual servings and each of the four boxes contained two or three full meals.
Some of our friends stopped by just to take a look at the strange foods which had come from so far away — and in our minds and hearts we worshiped the mysterious angel in a faraway land who had been so kind to send us this priceless gift. While we desperately needed every bit of food we could get to help us along — and even for five very hungry people this was an important drop in the bucket — this thoughtful gift was so much more than food. It was a bright light of hope in a nearly hopeless existence. Somebody was out there in this woeful world of ours who personally cared about our survival.
We later received another CARE package as well as a personal package from Aunt Martha. She sent us clothes and shoes which she had collected from people with whom she worked. Some of the dresses fit either Mom or me after minor alterations — we were extremely thin then. Others provided materials for Mom to make clothes, either for us or for trading to get food and various items that we needed. The shoes Aunt Martha sent were much too small for either of us, but the solution to that was the Shoe Exchange.