May 26, 2005

Doll brings tears decades later to eyes of WWII survivor

By Annick Shinn
Special to the Times

On Memorial Day, Americans honor their war veterans. The older people in Erna Holyer’s adult education writing class, at Del Mar High School, reminisce about World War II on a weekly basis. Three of those students grew up in Europe during that period and write about their foreign experiences. Ursula Smith is one of them.

Gloria Jabaut (left) gives Ursula Smith a porcelain doll in Erna Hoyer’s adult education writing class. Smith accepted the gift with the enthusiasm of a 6-year old, exclaiming “At last, I got my doll!”

Smith, a longtime resident of Campbell, recalls her childhood in Germany in the coal-mining town of Essen. Every Thursday, the tall woman with short brown hair and wired frame glasses stands up and, with a slight accent, reads a chapter of her story to the class. She relives the fear of a child rushing to a shelter every time sirens blared and describes the damage inflicted to her hometown from recurring bombings by allied forces and the constant hunger due to food shortages.

Gloria Jabaut, who sits next to Smith, was born and raised in San Jose. Her dark eyes, bright behind large square lenses, contrast with her white and silver curly hair. She was 12 years old when World War II ended and remembers it well.
As she listens to Smith’s memoirs, she comments, “Ursula’s stories have touched me and made me aware of another side of the war, because I only thought of Germans as adults, not as children.”

Recently, Smith wrote about Christmas of 1945, the first one after peace had returned. She was 6 years old, had never owned a doll, and hoped to get one. “I started praying every night and wished for a pretty doll wearing a light blue dress with a lace collar, like one I had seen before,” Smith read.

But conditions in Germany remained bleak. The gift she discovered on Christmas morning had nothing in common with the object of her dream.

She wrote, “In an unpainted wooden crate with wheels and a handle, I saw a limp rag doll made out of grey socks and ugly, old rags. I didn’t even want to touch it. I cried.”

Sixty years later, Smith’s eyes glistened with tears as she read the last lines of that chapter, “Behind me, Mother whispered she had paid a whole loaf of bread for the doll.”

Gloria Jabaut, reflected on her childhood in America. “War or no war, my mother saved green stamps all year so that I’d get a new doll every Christmas. In fact, in 1945, I received my first of several story book dolls.”

Realizing how fortunate she had been, compared to Ursula, Jabaut came to class the following week bearing a present for Smith: A porcelain doll dressed in light blue from head to toe. “I felt Ursula’s pain when she shared her story,” she explained. “I wanted to do something.”

Smith accepted the gift with the enthusiasm of a 6-year old and exclaimed, “At last, I got my doll!”

On Memorial Day, Americans commemorate veterans of past and present wars. Jabaut will remember her two cousins and stepbrother who died in combat on far away lands. Smith will never forget her town’s residents who perished under the bombs. For these two women, the doll in a blue dress will remain a symbol of their friendship and of the strong alliance between their native countries since World War II ended.

Annick Shinn is a San Jose freelance writer.