5 Feb 2017

THE GIRL WITH THE WHITE HAIR

When I was about 10, I had a strange girl in my class. She was tall and skinny, had a very pale face and white hairs. Really white, not light blond but white like an old woman. She hardly spoke with us and was always apart.

What draw my attention too was also the fact that the teacher who normally wasn't very friendly was very nice with her, which was quite unusual. Teachers at that time were teaching and that was it, they weren't interested in pupils psychological conditions everybody had his own worries.

Adults were busy with sorting out their lives, it was only 5 years after WWII and Bonn where I lived was to 80 % in ruins. A few of my classmates were still living in the basement of their houses.

This girl intrigued me more and more and finally I tried to become friend with her. But it was very difficult, she seemed to me as if she had built a wall around her and it was difficult to find a hole and get through to her.

The fact that she had white hair made me so curious that finally I asked my mother. My mother told me that the girl was probably an albinos and asked if she was wearing sunglasses or had red eyes, but I had looked and she had not. She had blue eyes. Finally the curiosity won and I dared to ask our teacher.

To my surprise she answered me I thought she would send me away. She told me that this girl lived in Berlin. Her house was bombed while the whole family was inside. Her parents were killed and she was a toddler and buried under the rubble for 3 days until she was discovered. She was so shocked by this experience that her hairs turned white.

I was shocked too, when I heard this and during the night I dreamt that I was buried under a house and screamed to get me out. My mother tried to explain and comfort me, but I could never forget what had happened to this girl who was my age, while I lived happily with my grandparents on the countryside.








Link here

13 comments:

  1. Hi Gattina - I'm glad you found out and could understand at last ... and it's given you and now us something to think about. The albinos in the black population in South Africa I felt very sorry for - they were ostracised a great deal. But that poor child ... I hope she had something of a happy life thereafter - but who knows ... thanks for bringing her to our attention - Hilary

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  2. A heart wrenching story. I hope she found a place in life.

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  3. Heart rendering, I really do hope she has had a wonderful life.

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  4. Thanks for sharing this memory and story. BTW, Gattina, I'm a bit embarassed that I never checked out this blog of yours before -- "only" Keyhole Pictures, which I knew of via Photo Hunt! You can thank Peppylady's blogroll for directing me to this particular blog post. :)

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  5. Poor girl. Still to this day children are brought up with the horrors of war happening around them.

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  6. How sad. I remember reading somewhere that Marie Antoinette's hair turned white almost overnight after she was imprisoned. It is amazing how certain traumas affect us physically.

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  7. How sad for the poor girl.

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  8. Did you manage to make friends with her eventually?

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  9. That is so sad -- what people went through. Awful, it made me cry like when I read Anne Frank. (I have thought before about how hard it was for you going through what you did when I just lived my regular life, of course with my 'daddy' being away as he was in the Navy during the war.) We had rationing but what little kid cares anything about that -- we had enough to eat. The only sad thing I remember (and it wasn't very sad) was my mother crying when my little brother threw away one of his shoes and she did not have any more coupons for a new pair. (She never let us know how much she missed my dad.) We had it pretty easy here during WWII. That may change soon.

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  10. Isn't amazing what some children have to go though.
    Thankful now they have counseling.

    Coffee is on

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  11. What a heartbreaking story... So young and she had to go through such a horrifying experience.

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  12. I agree that this is a sad story. But I hope this girl found happiness later in life. It made me remember that I went to grade school with an Albino girl. And, teachers were not always nice back in the old days. I'm glad that things have changed for the young ones today.

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  13. That really brings home the horror of war.

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