Bad Doberan, Dairy

Emmy’s cousins, who lived in Mettlach, near Luxembourg, were evacuated to a home in Bad Doberan, at the beginning of WW II, so they would be out of the way of the fighting armies. A lady named Vera, a member of the family they lived with for that time period, is still a family friend. While the Berlin Wall stood, until Vera retired she was not allowed to leave East Germany, or to visit West Germany. After she retired, the government let her leave East Germany with a round trip ticket and 15 marks. They hoped she wouldn’t return so they could stop paying her pension and medical bills, and could then assign her home to someone else. When we visited Bad Doberan, Vera took us to see the Cathedral, where the people gathered nightly for prayer in the weeks before the Berlin Wall came down.

Vera told us that when she was a child her family operated a dairy, with the cows located in the lower part of this building, and their home was in the upper floors. The part of the story concerning how and when it was damaged, escapes me completely.