A refugee's story
Today would have been the birthday of Lieselotte (Lilo) Collier.
Lilo was born in Frankfurt am Main Germany, 10 months after Hitler took power. She lived her early life in a four bedroom apartment in downtown Frankfurt. Close the the cathedral, schools, train and shops.
During World War II her neighborhood and home was bombed out by the Allies. In 1943, Hitler, believing that children under 12 years old, were the future of the Third Reich, ordered all the children out of the major cities of the country.
Since Germany was knee deep in the war, there was no motorized transportation available for the children to get to their new assigned homes. My mom with a couple hundred other children walked off and on for 46 days to an orphanage just inside the Austrian border. She lived at this orphanage for almost 18 months.
Five days after the war ended, the director of this orphanage called all the German children together and told them that there was no money for them and that they had to leave. Two days later, they were driven to the Austrian-German border and left to fend for themselves. For 7.5 months Lilo wandered the country side and cities, slept in door ways, bombed out schools, churches and alleys. At times she had rotten food thrown at her, rocks and other garbage too and had even been shot at once.
Finally, an American military battalion found her and several others and brought them to a staging orphanage where parents could come to find their separated children. On the 17th week while at this orphanage, Lilo's father found her and brought her back home to Frankfurt.
Because of her trek through the Bavarian Mountains while wearing substandard footwear, she got frostbite on her left leg and right toes. When she was pregnant with me, the hormones in her body changed and because of the injury to her toes and leg, she contracted gangrene. In order to save my life, she had to have her left leg and right toes amputated with just local anesthetic. In spite of the precautions, I was born two months early and never caught up physically til I was about 25.
Lilo met an American soldier and we came to San Antonio and then lived in Tacoma WA. I remember all my life, kids staring at her because of her prothesis, kids snickering because of her heavy accent. I remember every time a low flying plane or a siren would come by, her cringing.
She had a very hard life after the war, always worried about her weight, being not too thin, not too heavy in order to acommodate her left leg. She was unhealthy and descended into alcoholism and died of a stroke when she was 51 years old.
She did leave a legacy for me though....to always be involved in the civic life of your city, state and nation. She taught me how to listen to a candidate and read between the lines when they are advocating for fascism. She taught how to live my faith through civic involvement and concern for the poor and voiceless. She challenged me and had me achieve my US Citizenship through testing.
I wrote this to honor her, to remind us of the human cost of war and to remember those like her.
Happy Birthday Lieselotte (Lilo) Collier
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