But the war is over . . .

Last night I ate dinner with Rena and Toos. Rena is 72, from Germany. Toos is 81, from Holland. After dinner the conversation centered on their lives in those countries during WWII. Both were children but their memories are vivid.

Toos's family had to leave their home--with all its furnishings--because the Germans wanted it. I do not know where her family went. They, the family, were always hungry. They would drink lots of water every night to fill their stomachs, trying to fool their bodies into believing they weren't hungry. She once tried to steal a potato for her family--one potato--from a German supply truck and was kicked by a German soldier.

Rena was five years old in early 1945, and Toos said, "But the war was over then."

"Not for us," Rena said. She lived with her family in eastern Germany, frightened to tears by stories she heard from the adults about what the Russians would do to them when they got there. She was nearly inconsolable. Her family knew they had to get out. They loaded all they could into a small horse-drawn cart and began their walk to the west. It took six weeks, through snow, ice, mud, and deep privation. They slept in whatever shelter they could find--barns, shacks, houses of kind people--finding what food they could.

They had very little food, little clean water on the way. And they had lice, a great humiliation for them. (They were staying in the house of some kind person on the way on that occasion.) Rena said, "We washed our hair in kerosene. Can you imagine?"

I do not know where they finally arrived, but I know it was more than ten miles from the hospital where they took Rena's mother, who had cancer and who died nine months after they reached freedom. Rena was six. Her oldest sister became her mother.

They were instructed to destroy the Nazi flag, but Rena's sister used it--bright red--to make a dress for Rena, who had no clothes. She was frightened all the time because of that dress.

I was also alive during that war, my fifth birthday was on Victory in Japan Day, September 2, 1945. My aunt Allie brought the newspaper to our house in West Los Angeles and she, my mother, and I sat in our little kitchen nook. I listened as they talked happily about the end of the war.

Food and gasoline were rationed. I saw the ration books. I heard the navy guns practicing in Long Beach harbor. But I do not remember ever going without anything I needed. Never going to bed hungry, never wanting to sleep long in the day so I wouldn't feel my hunger.

I am glad to know those two women, glad for their lives and their strength. They said last night that people have said they couldn't possibly go through what they--Rena and Toos--went through and endure and be okay, but "you do it," they both said, "because you have to."