Main board: Karin's quilt

I was eight. We fled from Prussia in 1945 in a horse-drawn carriage - my mother, my grandparents, my sister and me. One day a bomb fell on us. I was only injured, but my three-year-old sister died. Eventually we ended up in a refugee camp in Denmark. I remember how my mother baked a "camp cake" with the food we got from MCC and invited other refugees for "coffee and cake". And now I have been living in Switzerland for a long time and I want to give back some of what I received back then. That's why I sew quilts in a sewing group.

Karin Gerber, Tramelan

 

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We are going to a small village called Tramelan in the Jura to visit Karin Gerber-Bartel. Karin has been part of a quilting group in Mont Tramelan for several years. Once a week, women there meet in an old school to sew quilts, which they then give to the MCC for distribution. Fleeing violence and war - Karin knows this all too well. When she had to flee from Unterberg in Prussia in 1945 in a horse-drawn wagon with her mother, grandparents and siblings, she was 8 years old. They got as far as Danzig at first, but the war followed them.

Karin working on a quilt for Syria.

(Photo: Nelly Gerber-Geiser)

"One day we were outside and a bomb fell on us," Karin recounts. "I was eight years old. My fingers, hands and hip were injured by a shell. My three-year-old sister was with me." The little sister died from the detonation of the bomb. Karin still bears the scars of the injury and stretches out her left hand, which is missing its fingertips and is completely scarred.

Her family desperately tried to flee from the violence, so they boarded a small boat without knowing where it was going. It took them to a larger ship in the middle of the Baltic Sea and little Karin climbed aboard via a ladder. The ship took them to Denmark, where they lived in 5 different refugee camps for the next three years -without their father, who was already a prisoner of war by then.

During their time in these refugee camps, the family received relief supplies from the Mennonite Relief Center (MCC), which brought great joy. Karin remembers her mother baking a "camp cake" with the ingredients and inviting other refugees to "coffee and cake." "The coffee was very thin because we stretched it so that it was enough for everyone," Karin recounts.

Karin's neighbor Ilse, also a refugee from 1945, kept the blanket she received from MCC after her escape until her death.

Decades later, Karin now lives in Switzerland and wants to give back what good she herself has experienced. That's why she sews quilts in her sewing group.

Karin has a photo of the quilt distribution in Syria and in it you can see one of the quilts her sewing group made. She smiles proudly and says, "When I hear the current news about Syria, I see the pain of the people and their suffering -then I see the individuals and wonder what they are going through." She is very happy about the photo because it shows how happy the recipients are. "It makes me happy to pass something on. I have learned in life that we should not let what we have go to waste, but share it ....."

At the moment there are about 15 such quilt groups in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The quilts are taken to places where there is great need, such as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan. And there they bring much joy and beauty to people who have lost much or everything. The quilts lie in the living room during the day, they are hung on the walls or used as room dividers - some people call them "Mennonite quilts".


According to a report by Naomi & Doug Enns.