My present was the first orange I’d ever tasted

Dec 24th, 2009 | By Debbie Vitez | Section: Community

This ran in the Hamilton Spectator

Mike Karschti
The Hamilton Spectator
Hamilton
(Dec 24, 2009)

When I was about six years old in Transylvania, Romania, during the Second World War, our family was evacuated, lost everything, and became refugees. I had just attended my first two weeks of school.

For about a year, we were shuttled by train in livestock boxcars from station to station, about five to eight families per car. I watched with fear as the sky lit up with what looked like Christmas trees, and bombs exploding, airplanes diving and shooting. These are memories that linger to this day. I lost my baby sister during that time.

In 1945, when the war was over, for about a year we lived in huts/structures covered with sod, then we were settled in a town in Austria — no school for three years, every kid’s dream.

In 1946, for our first Christmas in an actual small two-room dwelling, there were five of us. We decorated a Christmas tree on a table, with homemade paper chains and clip-on candles. Somehow on Christmas Eve, when we lit the candles, lo and behold, there under the Christmas tree were a few fancy wrapped candies and two oranges for my brother and me. That was the first orange I had ever tasted in my life. Funny how silly memories linger for years.

Today I am blessed with a love-rich life — a loving wife, beautiful and smart, three daughters, four granddaughters, three grandsons, and three funny sons-in-law.

link to story

http://www.thespec.com/article/696188

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