Happy National Day Belgium
July 21
We celebrate our July 4th Independence Day and even have events for what we call Bastille Day but the French simply call the 14th of July. However, we certainly do not do that for many other countries, including little Belgium.
That was where I was born just ten days after my parents crossed the Belgian frontier as post World War II refugees. The hospital where I was born was a bit of paradise for my poor mother who, as a child, has been sent by Stalin with her family as an ‘enemy of the people’ to a camp in the far north of Russia, wound up at ten as the nanny of the children of communist official, and was taken by the Nazis when they marched into what is now the Ukraine. Luckily for her, she wound up as a nanny again, this time to the family of a Nazi military doctor. However, she was treated in such a way that, during the bombing of Dresden by us, the Allies, she ran away.
Well, the hospital I was born in was named after the beloved Belgian Queen Astrid, who died in a car accident leaving the future king of Belgium, Baudoin and his brother, tiny orphans. My mother spent ten days there, happily resting her weary body and spirit. She used to talk to me about that time, how nice everyone was to her, an exhausted, almost skeletal being who had somehow managed to carry a three and a half kilo, that is over seven pound child, to term. She always brought up the ‘soupe verte’, the green vegetable soup, she ate more than once and loved, one she learned to make to perfection.
Though post WWII refugee life in Belgium was not easy for my parents, I never felt it. Unlike many who just stuck to their own communities, my mother, full of the good treatment at the hospital, struck out. My daily friends, just like hers, were Belgians, same age children of the women she became close to. I went to school starting at two and a half, running away to be with those friends. The nuns decided to let me attend, as I behaved very properly.
Though I had no biological grandparents around, I had Madame Juliette, who treated me to galettes and coffee (what else!) in her little store. It got even better when we moved to 31 rue de Forchies, where our neighbors, an old couple whose son had married a lovely young woman but had no children, would hand me sweet after sweet. Oh, yes, my best friend Annie, an only child like me, and I used to steal from the large container where her grandmother left a slightly sweet waffle dough to rise.
In school I was a favorite, being on top of the class and treated as such. I’ll never forget the books I received at the end of the first and second grade when I got on stage. It did get me into trouble, as one girl called me a ‘sale etrangere’, that is a dirty foreigner, but I showed her — I punched her. Papa had to come in for that, but, having explained why I did it, was let go of with a little advice.
Ah, yes, though my parents had no car, I did manage to go in style to at least some of those events. The farmers from whom we bought our milk and butter possessed one and, having lost their little boy during the war, they drove us more than once.
Oh, I also had an auntie, the lady from whom we rented our last row house. She was the nurse for the school district and, having lost her fiancé during the war, was alone. She taught me how to eat properly with a knife and fork and took me, among other trips, to see the movie Desiree in Charleroi.
I missed Belgium when I got here. After all, here one did not curtesy when a teacher walked in. The kids in Passaic did not take kindly to that. I did not attempt to repeat the gesture. However, I had Miss Davis who with her friend made me skip a grade, the schools in Belgium being more advanced than those here. With Miss Davis in both the fifth and sixth grades, I learned my American and world history.
Of course, Belgium continued to be with me, not only through letters that I wrote for some time, but very close friends of my parents, he Russian, she Belgian. Madame Macha received all the great women’s French magazines that were produced at the time, including Elle. She also had a rather extensive book collection. I never took French in high school, only audited the third and fourth year. After all, I spoke and wrote French better than did the teacher. Macha and Serge left for the south of France after the 1964 World’s Fair. That was when I went to Mount Holyoke College.
The world I have known, the United Nations with its missions and the non-governmental organizations that I have been part of, would never have been possible without my little Belgium and its wonderful people.
Oh, did I forget? Mathilde, the Queen of Belgium, is the daughter of a refugee mother. Yes, that refugee may have had a title and her parents a better life than mine before World War II and then, Soviet domination and the need to flee, but it still brings tears to my eyes. A man I worked with for some years told me how, when he was invited for a talk with King Baudoin, the orphan of Queen Astrid, it was the king himself who poured the tea for him and his wife. I guess that sums up why I will raise a glass to Belgium on July 21.
