Dutch Living Conditions

Interviewer: During that winter of 1944 - 45, how would you describe the conditions that the Dutch people were living under? Well they were living under pretty bad conditions. They were all living in the basements of their homes because of all the bombing and stuff like that and we took over the houses that they lived in, their houses, and they still lived in the basement. We were all treated good, we treated them good, we give them a lot of food, what we could scrounge and stuff like that. And they were in pretty bad shape for all because the Germans, where they was going they took everything that they had. Took all the, they had pigs and cows and stuff and hens and they just scooped them and took everything because they didn’t have any grub themselves, the Germans took, they was taking everything away and left them with nothing. We talked to a displaced person there and there was a woman there with this little girl and her feet was all, pretty raw on the bottom and they said they had walked 10 miles to take them just to get a loaf of bread and the bottoms of her feet were just wore on the bottom. A little girl about 10, 11 years old. You know you see all that over there, the civilians really suffered in that war.