US HistoryMr. MizeLevel 1

Former WWII refugee sends hope in a box to young Syrian boy

3/22/16

CHICAGO — In 1945, when he was 8 years old, Gunter Nitsch and his family fled their home in the German province of East Prussia to escape the Russian army, only to be captured six weeks later and forced to live as refugees for much of Nitsch’s childhood.

Today, Nitsch is a retired marketing consultant living in Chicago with his wife of 40 years. He moved here in 1976, worked and raised two sons. He is a living testament to the strength of the human spirit, and proof that, for many former refugees, life gets better.

Which is why, a few weeks ago, Nitsch wrote a letter to Zaher, an 8-year-old Syrian boy living as a refugee in

Jordan.

“Hello Zaher,” Nitsch begins. “I am 78 years old and live in the United States. Seventy years ago, when I was 8 years old like you, I was also a refugee. I’m writing to share my story with you to let you know that, no matter how bad things may seem, there are good people in this world who can make everything better.”

Chicagoan Gunter Nitsch, a 78-year-old World War II refugee, has reached out to Zaher, an 8-year-old Syrian refugee boy living in Jordan. Nitsch was a recipient of a CARE package when he and his family were living in Germany, and he wanted to offer the same sense of hope to another child.

The letter was delivered to Zaher by CARE USA, the organization founded in 1945 to deliver packages of food, clothing and other lifesaving items to World War II survivors.

Nitsch was, himself, a CARE package recipient.

In 1948, Nitsch, his mother and his brother escaped the Russian state-run farm where his mother worked 12-hour days. They crossed illegally into West Germany, where they settled into a refugee camp on a former ammunition dump.

“One day there was a knock on our door, and the mailman said, ‘I have a parcel for you from the United States,’” Nitsch told me. “My mother said, ‘We don’t know anybody in the United States.’”

Still, Nitsch accompanied his mother on the 2-mile walk to the village, where they collected a large box tied in metal string. They took it home to open and found a bounty of riches.

“Whole, colorful packages of food,” Nitsch said. “Rice, ham, cocoa powder, corned beef, a bar of chocolate that must have weighed a pound. I had never seen anything like it.”

A letter, from a Mennonite Christian family in Pennsylvania, was also enclosed. They had written it in old-fashioned German, Nitsch said, with English words sprinkled throughout.

“My mother wrote a long letter back, and six weeks later we got another parcel,” he recalled. “There was a can of coffee, shoes for my mother, myself, my brother. It was like gold. I tried a can of fruit salad, and I had never eaten anything like it. In my childish mind, I thought, ‘If there’s a heaven and there are angels, this must be what angels eat.’”

The packages continued for two years, totaling more than a dozen.

Nitsch and his mother and brother eventually were reunited with his father, and they moved to Cologne, Germany. His mother wrote to the American family and said they no longer needed the packages.

In 1964, Nitsch immigrated to the United States.

“My mother said, ‘You have to look up these people,’ but to be honest I never did,” Nitsch said. “It wasn’t until I got married 10 years later to a lady from New York. We rented a car and met the family in Belleville, Pa. They had sent parcels to two dozen families. We were the first ones to come back and say, ‘Here we are. We are the people you sent parcels to.’”

The CARE organization keeps in contact with many former refugees who received packages, said Brian Feagans, CARE’s director of communications.

“We see these original CARE package recipients as this incredible group of people who have a deeper understanding, maybe than most, of what it means to get help in your lowest moments,” Feagans told me. “Particularly from a stranger in America. That really resonated with a lot of them, Gunter included. Here they were part of what they thought America considered the enemy — Germany, for Gunter — and they get this package that, as Gunter says, very much saved their lives.”

CARE recently asked five original package recipients to write letters to Syrian refugee children, which is how Gunter came to be in touch with Zaher.

“March 15 is the five-year anniversary of the Syrian crisis,” Feagans said. “We’ve reached over 1 million people with food baskets, blankets, hygiene kits. On the five-year anniversary we wanted to send something else: hope.”

Gunter fashioned paper airplanes to accompany his letter to Zaher, and he included photos of himself as a child. In one photo, he’s with his German shepherd, Senta, who was left behind when the family first fled its home in 1945. Zaher also had to leave behind pets, Feagans said: a cat and several pigeons.

“When I see refugee kids on TV, I don’t care which country or which color or what religion,” Nitsch told me. “I feel sorry for them. They lost whatever they owned, whatever they were used to. But the worst, to me, is not having school. Not having school is horrible.”

Nitsch earned a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in his late 20s and went on to write a book about his childhood. “Weeds Like Us,” published in 2006, is dedicated to the Mennonite family: “With heartfelt gratitude to the late Daniel J. and Naomi Peachey, whose care packages sustained my mother and me in a West German refugee camp, and who years later made my wife and me unofficial members of their family in Pennsylvania.”

CARE has posted audio of the original package recipients reading the letters they wrote to the Syrian refugees, which you can hear at their website. You can also watch video of Zaher opening and reacting to Nitsch’s letter. The paper airplanes are a hit.

“I hope that your life will also change for the better soon,” Nitsch writes to Zaher. “No matter where you are, always try to learn as much as possible by reading books. The day will come when it will pay off.”