Oral History Interview with Ann Jonushaitis, October 8, 2005 Page: 3
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a slice of bread.
Mom used to go beg for food and to do this she at times would go
away for two days. We lived in a small town and everybody was
hungry. She might be gone for a day or so and come back with a
small sack of flour. You had to wait in the longest lines to get
anything.
During the war there was nothing. You could have money but you
couldn't buy anything.
We didn't even have toilet paper or know what it was until we
came into the United States.
In this country you eat sweet corn; in Germany they don' t eat
corn. There was field corn but no sweet corn. They used the corn
meal in their bread. We didn't know what corn was until we came
into this country. We only knew that farmers used corn to feed the
pigs. There was no sweet corn or popcorn at that time available in
Germany.
A typical meal for the Lithuanian people would be potato and meat
and maybe a little vegetables. It would have to be a cooked
vegetable, not eaten raw. There was no salads like you have in this
country.
One time we did have a garden after the war and mom had lettuce
and beets and tobacco. Since our dad was dead and we needed wood to
cut for cooking and heat they would bring us wood and my mother
would give them tobacco leaves in exchange for the wood and they
would also split the wood for us.
If you hung the laundry out on your own line you had to stay
until it was dry because the people would steal it.
We had a dress and wore those heavy socks and they would have
holes in them so you kept pushing them down and your shoes. If you
got a hole in the shoe you would put a piece of cardboard in the
bottom. We always walked barefoot in the summer. The shoes you
bought were heavy leather and you would get blisters. When they
would get softer it was because the shoes were wore out.
We were DP (displaced people).
We lived in a burned out barracks. One of the worse barracks was
a big long barracks and beds made out of wood and mattresses were
straw and already like flour because so many people had already
laid on them thus there was no softness at all. That was the worse
I remember. The barracks was really cold in the wintertime.
Mr. Tombaugh
During that time was there problems with lice and the such?Mrs. Jonushaitis
Yes, the lice and bed bugs were all over. Mom tried to comb them
out of our hair but you couldn't help it. Everybody had it too.
Mr. Tombaugh
Did you stay all winter in that barracks?
Mrs. Jonushaitis
Yes, there was one stove in the center for that barracks. We had3
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Jonushaitis, Ann. Oral History Interview with Ann Jonushaitis, October 8, 2005, text, October 8, 2005; Fredericksburg, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1606461/m1/3/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.