From: fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: Re: Pest house & Typhus
Date: 22 Jan 93 17:57:23 GMT
Organization: CompuData Inc.

lincoln@rand.org (Tom Lincoln) writes:

>Typhus is an unlikely candidate. It is most characteristically a disease of
>filth, rats and wartime combined and was common in WW I and II among
>devistated groups.  It was also common in the gettos and the Germans
>feared it.

Well, perhaps I'm the only person on the net who actually had and survived
this disease.

After the war, in Berlin, things were a bit of a mess to say the least. I was
there. There was no food or shelter and as children we made do like the
little urchins one sees in the movies. We climbed into the basement of the
Russians and stole briquets of coal, we searched thru their garbage for
edible things, we ate weeds and lugged the feet of animals to wherever we
lived at the moment.  Mom would cook a cow's hoof and make soup out of it for
a week or more.  My mother would often be gone searching the countryside for
food what we used to call 'hammstern' - that is trade something of value for
another piece and take it away just like a hamster would. She may return with
a pound of flour which we then made flour soup out of.  Strangely enough there
was always water to be had somewhere. I used to hate lugging a bucket of water
but did my share of it.

Anyway, as an eight year old I had to grow up fast and be the man of the
house.  I was malnourished to skin and bones.  Only my stomach was huge from
all the soup I guess.  It makes me sad to see the kids in Somalia but I was
there already.  And then I got deadly sick.

As mothers tend to get frantic when their children are about to die, mine
searched for a doctor like a madwoman. No one really cared. She found a
Russian clinic somewhere in Berlin.  I think it was a military hospital of
some kind but I don't really remember any of this.  My mother told me.

Apparently she begged whoever she could find to come to take a look at me
wherever I was. Fat chance of that. But one Russian doctor said to bring me
there and he would take a look at me. Since I was too weak to walk my mother
and aunt undertook the trek taking turns carrying me.

The doctor said I had 'Typhus' which I now understand to be typhoid fever.

While all this stuff sounds a bit melodramatic, even to me, what my mom said
happened was that the doctor, a Russian soldier, gave me a direct blood
transfusion from himself and saved my life. I've no idea why the blood
transfusion, maybe some nourishment and other care really did the job.
Anyway, since I was living the life of a cat, I still had a few spares and
used up one of them.  Actually, by that time, I already had cashed in at least
two.  More were to come.

History is always lived by real people. We need to dig up history to know a
little about our ancestors and our own past. None of this should be simply a
bunch of dates if we are to take genealogy as a serious hobby.

Fred

PS One of the main reasons for my interest in writing a family history is
really an attempt of gratitude to my beloved mother who sacrificed so much for
her children.  The only way I know how to pay her back is to write it all
down.



-- 
W. Fred Rump 	office:	   fred@COMPU.COM     "A man's library is a sort of 
26 Warren St.   home: fr@icdi10.compu.com 	harem" - Emerson (1860) 
Beverly, NJ. 08010                          		 
609-386-6846    bang:uunet!cdin-1!icdi10!fr   
Newsgroups: soc.roots