Showing results by author "Margot Benary-Isbert" in All Categories

Two rooms all to themselves⁠—it was almost too good to be true! For this was postwar Germany, filled with starving, homeless people trying to stay alive amidst the rubble, and to the Lechows the two freezing attic rooms in Mrs. Verduz’ house on Parsley Street were an unbelievable stroke of luck. No matter that every stick of furniture and even the cracked dishes were borrowed from a grudging but kind landlady, that food was so scarce they were nearly always hungry, that Matthias, loving the stars and growing things, was assigned to construction work by the Labor Office.

January 1948 began a wonderful year for the Lechows. With Father newly returned to Western Germany from a Russian prison camp, they were together again and could enjoy a measure of security and happiness in The Ark, their railroad car home on Rowan Farm. It was a year that held for sixteen-year-old Margret in particular, both joy and sorrow. She found real satisfaction in entering Mrs. Almut's Great Danes in two important shows and in raising several young animals which were her very own.