Looking for advice [View all]

Last edited Sun Sep 28, 2025, 01:02 AM - Edit history (1)

I want to share the plight of a young girl from Frankfurt am Main Germany who during the war became a refugee. Her name is Lieselotte (nick name Lilo.) She was born in Frankfurt in 1933. At the age of nine, Hitler had decreed that the nations' children were the future of the Third Reich. Since all major cities were being bombed into rubble, Hitler had ordered that all children from the age of 6 -15 be evacuated and relocated from all the major cities. Frankfurt, being the financial and banking center of the nation was one of those cities. Because there wasn't any transportation available, Lilo (along with many others) was sent to walk to an orphanage just inside the Austrian border during the winter of 1943. It took forty six days to do so. Five days after the war, the director of the orphanage gathered all the children together and gave each child the equililant of 8 dollars and then sent them on their way, telling them the Austrian government couldn't afford to keep them.

Once again, there wasn't any transportation, so Lilo spent the next 4 months wandering from town to town in order to get back to her parents. Lilo slept in fields, bombed out builidlings, in churches when they were kind enough to house children. doorways and alleys. She was shot at, had garbage and rocks thrown at her. She slept in door ways, bombed out buildings, churches when the pastor was kind enough to let her do so. In her fifth month of wandering she was spotted by and picked up by an American military battalion. She was driven to a Catholic orphanage in Northern Germany and spent the next four months hoping her parents would come and find her. During this time she took part in the only recreation available, singing in the Obern Kirke Kinder Chor. Each Saturday the girls would be lined up against the dining room wall while parents came and searched for their missing children. Finally on the fourteenth week, her parents came and she was repatriated and sent home with them.

Because she had to walk through the Bavarian Mountains with substandard foot wear, during the winter, her feet and left leg were frost bitten. When she became pregnant with her first child that frost bite turned into gangrene and in order to save her baby's life, she had to have her left leg amputated just above the knee. For the rest of her life, every time she heard a siren or low flying plane, she cringed. She also endured the stares of people looking at her artificial leg, her little boy endured teasing most of his childhood. She had numerous health problems and was always watching her weight. Too much weight, the leg wouldn't fit. Underweight and the leg would slip off. After many illnesses, Lilo died at 51.

THAT LITTLE GIRL GREW UP TO BE MY MOTHER

My question is, I have been approached by a book writer who wants to tell her story...it wouldn't be just this episode, but about being in Germany and born the same year Hitler took power, also about her travails and her acclimation upon coming to the US. My biological father left when she had her leg amputated in the 7th month of her pregnancy. She married a career military person who passed away when I was 6 because of war related injuries.

Should I tell him to go for it, or do think it's old news and not that compelling?
Just trying to get some opinions...thanks Mike C