Title: Barefoot in the Rubble
Author: Elizabeth B. Walter
Year: 1998
Media Type: Book
Lending Status: Borrow
How Acquired: ZVA purchase for SGS
Review/Description: Barefoot In The Rubble by Elizabeth B. Walter offers a different perspective on the post-war experience. Elizabeth was only four years old when her family was interned and her father was sent to Russia. She tells her story through some vivid memories of her own as well as events related to her by her parents and other relatives. She accepted starvation, cold, sickness, and death as part of normal life because she was too young to remember anything different. Despite all their hardships, children still played, even though their only toys might be rags, sticks and bits of string. When the family escaped and was reunited in Austria after almost four years, she discovered a whole new world of wonderful pleasures, even though they remained poor. She asks, “What is butter?” and “Who is father?” as they journey to Austria. She later experiences for the first time things that children normally take for granted, like her first rubber ball and her first tastes of lemon and chocolate. As a point of interest, Elizabeth was from Karlsdorf, about 25 km south of Zichydorf, so her experiences must approximate those of our relatives and friends.