Through the Eyes of Rita: A Story of Extreme Hardship, Resilience, and Determination

By Rita Barone

From her birth in Poland just before the start of World War II to her retirement in the United States, Through the Eyes of Rita tells the story of author Rita Barone. She offers a look at her tumultuous life throughout the war and the hardships after.

This memoir chronicles her journey to the United States, being trapped in a loveless marriage, and the joy and challenges of raising her children and having grandchildren. Through the Eyes of Rita narrates Barone’s story as she finally experiences peace in her retirement.

Praise for
Through the Eyes of Rita

“Through the Eyes of Rita is a riveting memoir that reads like a movie brimming with stories of childhood innocence, family, war, escape, love, loss, scandal, and resilience. … through the perspective of a four-year-old in Eastern Europe. As WWII breaks out … we experience her journey of heartbreak, joy, wonder, terror, and eventually relief as she and her family end up in Bavaria after the war ends. Ten years later … the author ventures to America to stay two years, learn English, and return. What she doesn’t see coming is her life being disrupted again, pulling her into a loveless marriage … Not letting it deter her, she forges on raising three children, learning English, and working full time. … The author demonstrates fortitude and resilience while never losing her sense of humor or her capacity to love. Truly inspiring. A must-read …!”
—Laura DiMinno, Huffington Post

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781480886872

Rita Barone

Rita Barone now lives a peaceful life enjoying her dog, Schultz, and all her grandchildren. She spends time in her garden, is an avid reader, and speaks to her brother, Manfred, every morning.

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Copyright © 2020 Rita Barone.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-8685-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8686-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8687-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020902359

Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/07/2020

Contents

Chapter 1

Wierzbica, Poland

Chapter 2

Mährisch-Schönberg, Sudetenland: To Deutsch-Liebau and Back

Chapter 3

Mydlniki, Poland

Chapter 4

On the Way to Lemberg, Ukraine

Chapter 5

Back to Mährisch-Schönberg in Sudetenland

Chapter 6

Heidlhof, Austria

Chapter 7

Creating a New Life

Chapter 8

What Lies Ahead

Chapter 9

Creating More Life

Chapter 10

Back to Traunreut: Love and Loss

Chapter 11

Back in LA: Crazy Behavior, a Friend in Counseling, and Bus Adventures

Chapter 12

More Disruptive Behavior, and Life Going Up in Flames

Chapter 13

Scandals and Loss

Chapter 14

More Scandal, and Fighting for Maria’s Children

Chapter 15

A Full-Circle Moment and a Sign That All Is Well

About the Author

For all my grandchildren

✓ I want to thank my grandchildren, especially my granddaughter Elizabeth, for inspiring me to write my memoir. Thank you, Laura, for editing my book. Thank you, Ron, for your computer expertise and for making my memoir look like a book. Thank you also to my son Edward for pushing me to write the parts I didn’t want to write.

Chapter 1

Wierzbica, Poland

T he horses were bolting and neighing right behind our backyard on the pasture, and the men who were trying to get some kind of control over them were shouting, yelling, and pulling on the ropes attached to them. Once in a while, a horse got loose, and the men would race to catch it again. Everything was in chaos, it seemed to me, as I watched through the dining room window. Mother told us not to go outside, adding that it was dangerous to play right in the midst of all the chaos.

There was a man who had a certain air about him who seemed to be hurting the horses. He was a veterinarian, and he was castrating them. The horses came from all the neighboring villages to have this procedure done. I must have been around three and a half years old at this time. I was very frightened watching the castration procedure and was especially disappointed that I couldn’t go outside to play.

Usually it was very quiet on the pasture. Horses grazed with their front legs tied together by ropes so they wouldn’t run away. They hopped from one place to another to get the taller grass, their long manes bouncing up and down. The horses were small compared to other horses, and they had longer tails and manes. They could also endure bigger hardships than ordinary horses could. They were the working horses from Poland and Ukraine.

There were small farmhouses scattered around the countryside, some with old wagon wheels on the roofs by the chimneys, where people wooed the storks to build nests and breed. The storks migrated from South Africa every year to our region, drawn by the wealth of pastures, farmlands, and wetlands. It was an old cultural belief that nesting storks would bring good luck and fortune to the farmers. In fact, we had a lot of storks. It was a very common sight where I grew up, each of those beautiful large birds standing near small ponds on one long red leg, once in a while putting its long red beak in the water to catch a frog.

The village was Wierzbica in Poland, the village where I was born. A little river flowed through the village that had a mill with a big wheel. The turning wheel provided electricity for our house. The mill was owned and operated by a Jewish man named Stieglitz. Whenever our lights went out, which happened quite often, we would chant, Stieglitz Miglitz, put on the lights! And within a few minutes, the lights would come back on again. We really believed that it was our doing.

We were three girls: Dora, with her somewhat wavy brown hair and blue eyes, who was three years older than I; Greta, who was me, with straight hair and hazel eyes; and Susie—Susanna—with blonde hair and blue eyes, who was just one year younger than I. Susie was, in my opinion, the prettiest of us girls. She was very delicate and somewhat spoiled.

Usually not much was going on in the village. Little boys ran around in funny little one-piece gray bodysuits with slits in the back, for obvious reasons, with little white handkerchief-like cloths sticking out of the openings. They were watching the livestock to make sure they wouldn’t run away. As small as the boys were, they already had a job. That is one of my early memories.

A Polish aristocrat also lived in that village. He owned most of the fields around it. My father, a German from Sudetenland, worked for him. It was his first job. He had just graduated with a degree in agriculture from a university in Sudetenland. How we came to live in that village is another story, one that takes us back a few years.

My father’s family came from Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia inhabited by German people. In the early 1920s or maybe earlier (there is nobody around anymore to ask that question of), my grandfather and his brother-in-law decided to explore Ukraine. Life was not easy in Sudetenland at this time. It belonged to Czechoslovakia after World War I, and times were tough.

My great-grandfather was a well-to-do man. He was the Burgermeister (mayor) at one time in Deutsch-Liebau and had also opened the first credit union. However, because times were tough, or maybe because they were just adventurous, Grandfather and his brother-in-law decided to look for another opportunity in another land, so they went to Ukraine.

When the two men returned, they were all excited because they had just come from the land of milk and honey. The land in Ukraine was extremely fertile and was called the breadbasket of Europe. The two men set about convincing my grandmother into selling the farm in Sudetenland and moving to Ukraine. After much deliberation, she finally agreed.

According to my father, my grandmother’s family had come at one time from France and then from Spain, where one of the ancestors had been knighted by the Spanish king. The family crest is a talon of a bird of prey and should still be in Deutsch-Liebau.

My grandparents moved to Ukraine, where they bought a farm near the city of Stryi. They had four children, two boys and two girls. Sadly, the oldest boy, Rudolph, was killed during the First World War. He bled to death in the mountains between Italy and Slovenia. He was just seventeen years old and my grandmother’s favorite child.

Rudolph was very much interested in our forefathers and studied their history all the way back to the French Revolution. I was told that he was a real character, full of jokes and mischief. My sister Dora must have inherited some of his genes because she too was full of jokes and fun. Looking at his picture, I see that she looked exactly like him.

Then there were my aunt Hilde (Mathilde), my father, Robert, and my aunt Rita. All attended the Ukrainian high school or gymnasium, as it was called. They all learned Polish and were also fluent in German and Ukrainian.

My father eventually attended the universities in Zneim and Neutitschein back in Sudetenland. On vacations, he’d return to Ukraine to be with his family. While in Sudetenland, he met a girl and got engaged to her. Her parents owned a shoe factory and were very rich. My family was overjoyed. Finally he would settle down and have a family of his own. I understand that he was quite the ladies’ man, so obviously my grandparents were very much interested in having him settle down.

However, when Father came back to Ukraine, he met Dozia, an eighteen-year-old Ukrainian peasant girl who worked for the local forester. They fell in love and eloped. My family couldn’t get over it. How could he do such a thing as to marry just an ordinary peasant girl and leave that nice rich girl in Sudetenland?

I don’t think the family ever forgave him for marrying my mother. There was always a little resentment. But the two of them married and gave each other just a plain metal ring. Later on, they bought themselves golden engagement rings: one with a sapphire in the middle and two small diamonds on each side and one a golden wedding band.

My father got his first job with the wealthy landowner whom I called Mr. Aristocrat (Mr. A. for short), and we moved to Wierzbica. That is how we came to live in that village. Pretty soon my parents had us three girls. I was almost named Barbara, but at the last minute my parents gave me the name Margaritha. I had no idea that my name was Margaritha until years later when I applied for a visa to the United States—that was when I found out my real name.

Anyway, I was called Greta. I didn’t like my name at all. Whenever someone would ask me what my name was and I’d answer, Greta, They’d almost always say, Oh, Greta Garbo. Now, garb in Polish means hunchback, and somebody with a hunchback is garbata. I had no idea that it meant a famous movie star, but if I had, maybe I would’ve liked my name better. Later, when I started school in Germany, I was called Rita, like my aunt, a name that I liked much better.

We lived in a medium-sized house in Wierzbica just a few hundred yards from Mr. Aristocrat. Mr. A. and his wife had one son, Zdzisio, who was about seven years old at the time. That poor boy had leukemia and bone cancer and had nobody to play with, so they invited my sister Dora to stay with them and keep him company. She spent many nights and every morning there, where both children were being tutored by Zdzisio’s governess Sophia. It was like Dora and Zdzisio lived with both families.

Sophia brought Dora and Zdzisio every day the few hundred yards to our house, where both Sophia and Zdzisio, and of course Dora, spent the rest of the day. In the evenings, Father played the guitar and sang Polish songs. The Polish police chief, the pastor, the teacher, and the forester (for whom my mother used to work) also came to our house. I loved those evenings.

Our house had a circular driveway and was surrounded by a wall of live scrubs and trees. There was a front porch off of which was an entrance into a hall. On the right, there was a big kitchen with two large long tables on both sides. All the way to the back was the stove, and on the wall was a wooden board where all the covers for the pots and pans hung. A door in the back led to the dining room. From the entrance hall straight forward was a door to my father’s office, which had a little gate. There the workers would wait to either bring their grievances or get paid at the end of the week. To the left were the bedrooms. I loved to be in the kitchen, where all the action was.

I remember the ironing in those days. The iron was a huge thing; you opened the top and put in hot coals. It must have been very awkward to work the big irons, but everything was ironed—including all the bedsheets and towels. Later, when we were no longer in Wierzbica, we had small irons that were put on the stove to get hot. The handles were removed and put into another hot iron while the first iron was heating up. I still marvel at all the work those people did while still making time to enjoy themselves.

There was a young girl from the village who would sit on the long table in front of the window with her feet propped up on a chair and embroider a tablecloth with matching napkins for us. She would gossip with the cook and maids, and I would listen. Sometimes my mother’s younger sister Mela, as we called her, because I couldn’t pronounce Maria, or her brother, my uncle, would come to visit. That was fun. He always played with us. The only thing I didn’t like was riding bicycles with him. For me it was torture. He put me in front on the handlebars and rode on the uneven dirt road, which was all we had at the time. I prayed for it to stop. It hurt, but I never complained because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

When I think about it now, I was a terrible child. I would always do some mischief and then run away screaming. My poor mother, and everybody else for that matter, must have been exhausted. Washing my hair was a big production. Two people had to be involved. One would hold me and the other would