Hooray for War Babies

by Madeleine Kando

For the past week, I have been a casualty of the influenza virus, and spent my time in bed, trying to catch my breath between bouts of coughing and wheezing.

I was transformed into a rusty, choking locomotive, and every night the sandman passed me by, realizing the futility of wasting his precious sand on me. So I spent my nights watching Word War 2 documentaries, to fit my somber mood.

I have almost recovered from my illness, but the obsession with the war has not stopped. After all, I am a war baby. I was born and spent the first 4 years of my life in that part of Europe, where the fighting was at its worst - the Eastern Front. Why cannot I remember? What happened to that part of my life? I was there, in the flesh, but now I am searching for myself in National Geographic documentaries and in big, heavy books that describe the insanity, cruelty and waste of it all.

As I write, I look out onto my lush suburban garden, full of chickadees and goldfinches, fluttering to and fro, enjoying the overflowing birdfeeders, the occasional wild turkey family strutting by and digging for seeds with their powerful claws. How did I get from there to here? Why did I survive and millions did not? In terms of risk factors, I was way up there. I am Jewish on my mother's side, which meant a clear stamp of annihilation approval from the Nazis and the Arrow Cross, until the Russians arrived.

I know, it is an existential question that I will never be able to answer: that I survived and millions others didn't, but it is at the root of my obsession and many survivors must share it with me. How can you not? The intense desire on the part of both sides to completely annihilate the enemy, civilian population included, only got thwarted because they were closely matched in strength.

I think of my daughters, both millennials, both bright, self-confident individuals, who never had to deal with war, famine, oppression.. What makes them different, I wonder?

War is not what anybody wishes for in their right mind, but it has a fascination for people of my generation. The war years were often the topic of conversation in our family. My mother survived 2 world wars and spent a good part of her life during or between wars. I could fill a small volume with stories with her war experiences, some heroic, others gruesome, but all of them worth listening to.

During World War 2, she shot a Russian soldier who was trying to rape her. In the dead of the Hungarian winter, she went on long bike rides in the countryside, armed with a bag full of silverware that she could barter for food. And to top it all off, she gave birth to my two-year older brother and 'the twins' (me and my sister). She wasn't quite sure how many of us she was carrying in her womb until the moment 'the twins' pushed their way into the world, since pre-natal care was of course a luxury she couldn't afford.

War has shaped both my mother's and my life and although I was too young to remember, it has made me who I am: a war baby.

There has been a lot of attention paid to 'baby boomers', those born after the War and the generation that went through the Great Depression, the 'Greatest Generation'. They are the heroes that fought in the war and saved us from the nightmare of Nazism. War babies don’t really qualify as a generation, since 5 years doesn't qualify, but we are part of the 'Silent Generation', too young to have fought in the war and too early to be boomers.

I am not sure why we are called 'silent', since the best singers are war babies; Joan Baez, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Janis Joplin and Barbara Streisand.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were war babies and among the major film directors are Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas. Actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Faye Dunaway, Harrison Ford, Lily Tomlin, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen, and Joe Pesci, they were all conceived during the war. I could go on till my fingers cramp up from typing famous names.

Is there something about making babies in war time that spawns talent in your offspring? Or is it because we came of age in the 60's, sometimes voted the 'best decade in history'?

Either way, I am proud of being a war baby because I had the privilege of living through the 'best decade in history', but I am mostly grateful that I survived the worst decade in history, when so many others didn't. leave comment here