My childhood memories are very nice ones. I had an easy childhood. I was born in East Prussia, in a quiet region–like Wisconsin–by a lake. My mother was a pediatrician and my dad was in the chemical field, and I was the youngest of five children–I had two brothers and two sisters.
I often went visiting patients with my mother. When I was about 8 years old I had to go by bicycle and get her to tell her there was another baby to be born. In those days we couldn`t reach her by phone because there were no connections. I enjoyed it. I always had a job to do for her–I think it was her way of teaching me responsibility.
Our whole life changed when Hitler came to power. My parents tried to stay out of politics, even though professionals were expected to be part of these organizations. They were not involved in anything.
Later when the war in Poland broke out, my father and my two brothers were drafted–I was barely a teenager. My mother was alone with us and it was a hardship on us. Then I went off to Berlin to study at the university.
My father was back by then, and 66, and I remember before I went to Berlin he said, ”Whatever you do, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Don`t join anything or volunteer for anything because you can get into trouble if you say the wrong thing or join the wrong thing.” And so I joined nothing because I saw what happened to other students.
When I came back for Christmas, in 1944, our professors had told us to double up on our work the semester before because we might not be coming back –the Russian army was advancing. I did that so I could get my degree, and I never got back. On Jan. 19 I was at home when my family had to flee from the Russians.
We left our home and all our possessions and everything. We took a few personal things and fled on a neighbor`s wagon. At the last moment my dad got a notice from the government–he was head of the volunteer fire department
–saying he had to take the fire engine in the opposite direction. That left my mother and me; it was frightening. But we had to go.
It was 25 below zero the day we left, and we`d gone about two miles when my mother had to stop off and deliver a baby at a woman`s house; then she came out and said she`d have to stay with the mother or the woman would die–that I must go on alone or the Russian soldiers would kill me. Freedom was 1,000 miles away. We agreed to meet at the next train station.
We caught the last train out before the Russians got there. It was a train of flatbed cars; it was bombed halfway to Berlin. I fell off, but eventually made it to Berlin.
At the station there were people constantly looking for each other, and they used the loudspeakers to announce names. I had just gotten a sandwich and some soup from the Red Cross when I heard my name called. I dropped everything and ran to meet my mother. In just a couple minutes the Russians were attacking and everyone was running, screaming.
It was a terrible bombing. We made it to a sister`s house in Bavaria six weeks later–my father got there in June. My mother and I were both very ill. My mother never regained her health. She died in 1952.
When the Americans finally came, I applied for a job to work with them. You had to have a job to have a ration card, and you had to have a ration card to get food. I worked in a dispensary for awhile but I wanted to be something more. I actually wanted to be a telephone operator so I could talk with the rest of the world. The head of the American information office there said there was a class in session for operators if I felt I could catch up– there was a lot to learn, with the code names for all the cities and such.
Three weeks later I graduated with the class and became an operator on the Munich switchboard. Then I was picked for an important assignment in Bavaria. When they found out I could speak several languages, I was asked if I would do interpreting work for Gen. George Patton. He needed an interpreter for the officials` visits to his office, although he wasn`t in town too much. The first time I met the general I was quite impressed and awed. He welcomed me and said, ”We will get along just fine if you do things perfectly.” So that`s exactly what I did. I hear people say he was not a humane type, but he was very much a humanitarian. He cared a great deal about people and about his soldiers, but he had high expectations. He demanded perfection, and sometimes he got it, but sometimes he didn`t. I started work with him in September and he died in December, and I went on to work for two more generals.
In 1947 I finally came to America–to Chicago–as the first German war bride. One of the biggest moments of my life was when I took my first step on American soil. They announced over loudspeakers that I was the first German war bride to come here, and I was proud. I became an American citizen in 1950 –it was the greatest day of my life.
My husband and I had a restaurant here, but things didn`t go too well. We were just working to make ends meet. I had a baby, a son, two years after arriving in this country. I thought if I had a baby I wouldn`t be so lonesome, and it did help somewhat. But after being married six years we divorced.
I went to post-graduate school for awhile, but had to quit to support the baby, and got into a fashion training program at a high-fashion hat store. It was great fun. We went to all the markets in Europe and I`d go directly to the designers and pick the hats. Later my company went with Weibolt`s and I was there for 22 years when I retired.
My son died in 1967. Of all the losses in my life, this was the greatest loss. We were very close. It happened on a vacation he took just before he was to be drafted for military service. He and another student and a teacher went sailing in Canada, and there was an accident. The teacher was drowning and my son went after him and swam him back to the boat. Then my son was getting too cold, and a gust of wind came and took the boat another 25 feet away and he went down and was lost. The teacher lived. My son died saving another`s life; I had always tried to instill in him the positive things in life, that we should be good to one another, and he was.
After his death was the low point of my life. It was then that someone suggested I get involved with BPW (Illinois Federation of Business and Professional Women`s Clubs). I was looking to fill that void in my life, and in BPW it was women helping women. And it did help me over those first hard years as I became more and more involved.
Our main objective is to help women improve their lives. Our biggest issue now is pay equity–women earn 64 cents for every dollar men earn. We are working politically for changes in that, and as a reminder of the inequity, until women earn a dollar for dollar, we will carry red purses as a symbol of the deficit.
The BPW is a natural thing for me–I was raised to want to help other people. We were always taught to help other people when we could. Then when I became personally involved with the organization and saw that it helped me grow, personally and professionally, I felt it was good. You can see the same kind of changes in the other women–at first sometimes they`re not quite as outspoken and outgoing as they are a few years later. When we become more aware as people, of things of national concern, that is very satisfying for me.
I personally consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to have the chance to live in this country in freedom most of my life. There aren`t many places in this world where you don`t have a dictatorship or some type of oppression. Sometimes I give a talk on my ”flight to freedom” and try to make American women aware that they shouldn`t complain about insignificant things, they should work for things that are important and have a positive outlook–that`s the only thing you can survive with.
Charness may be reached through her organization`s state headquarters at 528 S. 5th St., No. 209, Springfield, Ill., 62701.
