He knew what was gonna happen.

Let me tell you about my family, before I begin to relate what happened during the war. At home I had a lot of brothers and sisters. Six brothers and nine sisters, fifteen of them all in all. As far as I can remember we always had a good time because there were so many children. My mom was always happy, smiling. My dad worked hard, he was a hard worker. Early morning until late at night. He wasn’t a selfish dad, he worked hard and did all he could to provide for his children. He had his business with coal and oil and evidently he was pretty successful but it was hard laboring work.

We all worked as soon as we could out of school. Nobody sat around, that was not like those days. You worked to help out, to pay board and room, that was expected of you in Europe. I graduated from high school and went and got my first job at a bakery store. I was thirteen. I wanted to work in the bakery store because I always liked pastry, I thought I could eat all the pastry I wanted. But I soon got tired of it. I used to bring home goodies for my mom, she loved pastries and chocolate. When I got my paycheck once a week, we had to give it to our mom for groceries and the like. But she did give us back maybe a dollar for the week. That wasn't much, but it was quite a bit for us. I was happy to have a dollar.

Before the war broke out, my Dad met the LDS missionaries. He was a strong LDS man. The missionaries always told him about the food storage program, and my dad believed it. He began his own program and saved everything he could. Lots of food, and grain and salt--it all went in the attic. There was old shoes, old clothes, old tires. Just about anything we were going to throw away or grew out of, Dad put it in the attic. I remember my mom kept wanting to clean it all up and throw everything out. But my dad always said, "Don't you dare. Save everything. Someday we gonna need it."  He just knew. My Dad knew what was gonna happen and he was prepared.

As part of his preparation, my Father had taken the motor off my mother's washing machine and taken it up in the attic. He put a wheel on it from a bicycle and made sort of a wheat grinding contraption. Later, when the Germans came, we would have to grind that wheat at night so they wouldn't take it. We had a screen where the flour came through and the rough part would lay on top. That top part was like oatmeal, just one cup of it really held ya over. It was good. I remember, we had a lot of things stored thanks to my Dad who knew we would be desperate for the things he put away.

Jacoba-Third in from the right