Education and Entertainment

The war affected both of these things. Most public meetings were cancelled "for the duration". Little did we know at the beginning, that it would be for 6 years. This reminds me of an aspect of life in general; we are fortunate not to know the end from the beginning, or we might feel faint and unable to cope. God, in His wisdom, gave us a verse; Matthew 6:34, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." In fact, this reminds me of a little saying,

"The past is history;
The future is unknown,
But the present is a gift!"

That's why we have to realize that each day is a precious adventure to be treasured.

As far as education goes, everything changed. Air raids could happen at any time, and it was not possible to have a school full of children with out adequate shelter protection. At first we just worked at home. Then when half of the shelters were ready, we had school for half a day so that if an air raid came, half of the school could have protection in the shelter. Eventually we could go to school all day. Maybe the children had fun running in and out to the shelter and playing quiet games inside, but education was definitely disrupted.

The amount of disruption varied according to your age and whether the student was in higher education or the early grades. For me, I was 6 to 13 years old during the war, where as my husband was 13 to 19 years and he, accordingly, had a more difficult time preparing for college.