My Oma is my most interesting relative, because she is 86 and was in a war. If you are wondering what Oma means, it is a German word for Grandma because she is German. She was in World War II. She wasn’t fighting in the war, she was in a bomb shelter. She still tells me stories about whenever a bomb went off, you could feel your feet rumbling. She was only 12 years old at the start of the war. When she was a kid, she went to school and followed Hitler’s rules.

My Oma was born in 1927. She had two older brothers named Helmut and Bertolt, and a younger sister named Ella. They lived in an apartment on the 3rd floor. During World War II, her Dad and brothers were soldiers for the German Army. They all survived, but were held prisoner by the Russians. At the end of the war, my Oma was about 15 years old.

She moved to America in 1954, when she was 27 years old. She came over on a big ship called the Queen Mary. She lived with her sister and brother-in-law in New York and one year later her boyfriend came to America and they moved to Chicago. They got married and had a young son, Roy. My Oma’s first husband died of cancer soon after Roy was born. She married her close friend and they had a daughter named Joanie. My Omas real name is Ilse and her last name is Labrenz. She has had 2 kids and 7 grandchildren.