The story is as follows:
My grandmother was one of many children and she had many brothers and sisters. In the years before the Worl War I economic conditions were hard and many people were looking at emigration to the USA
Three of the brothers decided to emigrate together. It lasted awhile before the paperwork was completed but Finally in spring 1914 the left Belgium. Onde of the brothers was married and the couple had two boys 5 and 7 at that time. He parents had decided to leave the children with their grandmother, so they could first settle and then get the children to emigrate later.
As you expected war interrupted their plans. They had no more communication and were frantically searching ways to get their children back.
Meanwhile the grandmother lived in an area, the Germans wanted everybody to leave to set up their headquarters .
The mother left the area but got sick and died underway. The children were sent to a orphanage. But some year later the orphanage was bombed , the children survived und were quite awhile on the streets eating from what they found and good people shared with them.
The parents looked for help and paid several people to help them find the children. Finally they found a priest with contacts with the red cross. The red cross could locate the children and so they were put on a ship to New York. They arrived there and a journalist made the photo of the year: two small children with n 19 coming from Belgium.
The parents new the children were coming but no date. The mother went everyday to the train station and saw the phoo of her children ion the newspaper in the train station./
Finally they arrived and lived for long time in, the USA. At age 88 one of them was interviewed and retold the story (se attachment)
SO my idea was that may be , with your phantasy and creation you can retell the story in an exlibris? But if it gives you heartache to make we can forget it?
All the best
Hugo
Drawind, “Burns of memopy” S.Hrapov 2025
