A squirrel, grass with water for dinner: WWII survivor remembers growing up during devastation
Erika Karres was just 2 weeks old when World War II broke out.
“The first six years of my life were war, distractions, bombs, starvation, women crying,” Karres said. “Men being killed, Nazis going crazy and flags everywhere.”
Born in Germany in 1939, she now lives in Chapel Hill and is an author.
As veterans and war survivors mark the 75th year since D-Day, when tens of thousands of American and Allied troops stormed the shoreline of northern France, Karres wants to keep her story alive.
She only has a handful of physical keepsakes.
She said she and her family and friends survived off of very little when the war was raging, eating grass blades stirred with water and capturing wild animals.
“Once in a while we caught a squirrel — that was it,” Karres said. “That was our dinner. I mean l, picture it.”
But on June 6, 1944, there was a sense of freedom that quickly spread across Germany, she said.
Under the command of U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the invasion remains the largest amphibious assault in history and involved 7,000 ships along a 50-mile stretch of the French coast.
On Thursday, Karres wanted to send a message to every veteran still alive, whom she credits with her survival and ultimately her freedom.
“All I want to say is thank you, every veteran, everybody who participated in World War II and went to Europe and helped, thank you, thank you, thank you so much,” she said. “You saved me. You saved my life.”
