ANSCHLUSS (Annexation)
As Seen Through the Eyes of a 15 Year-old Girl

As I said when I started writing the first story, I will just skip the years and bring to life the things that formed and changed my life.

I am 15 years old now, working since I was 14 to help my mother out to feed 3 children. My oldest sister, Resi, now 22 years old, got married at 19, that left my mother to take care of Max, Trude, and me. That was more than she could do. I saw her many times filling our plates, putting them in the oven to keep the food warm.opening the oven, and counting the portions, 1, 2, 3shaking her head quietly, and going off to work without having eaten. Around the corner her mother would many times be waiting for her with a piece of bread and butter, saying, You didnt eat again, did you?. So many times there was just not enough, but she made sure that we had what we needed.

It is l938 and I am seeing the Austrian flags being exchanged with the German swastika flag, it was almost not comprehensible. The people were told Adolf Hitler is coming to the city. So people lined the streets, curiosity took over to see the man who was changing their country. The people here waiting curiously now were the same people who were lining the streets just the day before waving the Austrian flag to support their Austrian President in standing up against Germany. Nobody knew he had been forced to resign to avoid an unwinnable conflict. That was my first lesson in politics.
Of course, Hitler never came. After hour-long waiting, the German soldiers came marching through the streets, thinking all these people came to greet them.

Well it was a brilliant propaganda trick, and it worked .The world would see that Austrians had made their choice, it looked that way to the outside world. Only the ones who had been there knew the truth.