GERMAN HOUSEWIVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 January 1944, Page 6

GERMAN HOUSEWIVES

DOMESTIC TROUBLES

German newspapers make it clear s that the Allied air offensive is creat--3 ing all sorts of difficulties for women _ on the home front. Papers in all

. blitzed cities have printed full offi- _ cial announcements to housewives j that they would have to go without ■j regular water, gas or electricity supplies for some time. One Rhineland city tried to solve this difficulty last month by allowing all householders to have two candles lor each electric light put out of action by bombings. Another problem, according to the ■ Reich newspaper' reports, is the shortage of all household utensils. In • Fleusberg everyone owning copper kettles or boilers has been told she

must register them for requisitioning. In Bremen, certificates issued to bombed-out householders for the purchase of electric irons can no longer be honoured. Many Hamhuri? restaurants are so short ’ of cutlery that their clients are forced either to bring their own or make a deposit of five reichsmarks on every piece used during a meal.

Evacuation and large migrations of population as the result of the destruction of 2,000,000 dwellings, however, seem to be the biggest problem of all. Officials are making strenuous efforts to keep women as well as men at their work regardless of what happened to them during night air attacks. “The families of workers,” the announcement goes on to say, “will receive evacuation certificates if they are mothers with at least one child of school age or two children under 14 or are in the third month of preg-

nancy or cannot be considered for early employment because of illness.” Outside of women workers, however, numbers of mothers and children have been evacuated—some of them to communal camps, others into dtdpty lolts or into boardinghouses. Whenever these German women and children migrate, however, one thing is clear—-they cannot return to their . homes. Otherwise, the Government warns, their ration books will be taken away.