CARE packages brought rare food relief to postwar Lower Austria

The first CARE aid packages reached Lower Austria 80 years ago, when food was scarce after the Second World War, ORF reported. For contemporary witness Notburga Wetter, the greatest wish was “a slice of bread spread so thickly that you could see the teeth in it”.

At the end of the war, Lower Austria was a frontline region where fierce fighting continued. The civilian population was caught between fanatical National Socialists and the advancing Red Army, historian Philipp Lesiak of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for War Consequences told ORF.

“You cannot describe how catastrophic the situation in Lower Austria was, even with superlatives,” Lesiak said. Food supplies were the biggest problem after the war, particularly in 1946 and 1947. “There really was hunger. It is difficult to imagine today,” he said.

Wetter was born in 1945 and grew up with six siblings in Maria Enzersdorf in the Mödling district. For a time, the extended family lived together in cramped conditions in her grandparents’ house. She now lives in Hippersdorf in the Tulln district and remembers some of her early childhood herself, while learning other details from family stories.

“No shoes, hardly any clothes. Very simple food,” Wetter recalled of the first postwar years. When things went well, the family had bread spread with lard; otherwise, often only bread. Warm meals were also limited, and meat appeared on the table about once a week. Tea was made from rose hips, blackberry leaves or dried apple peel.

Lower Austria had been a frontline region during the final weeks of the war and then became part of the Soviet occupation zone. Bridges and transport routes had been destroyed, fields devastated and many people forced to flee, Lesiak said. Children were especially affected by the poor food supply. In 1946, rationing allowed a child 1,200 kilocalories a day, an amount Lesiak said was not enough to live on. People tried to supplement their diets through home cultivation, bartering and international aid.

A welfare worker brought the Wetter family CARE packages over several years. Wetter no longer remembers how many arrived or when, but she recalls brown boxes, tins and unusual foods. Her mother would hide some items from the children at “ape-like speed”, Wetter said. She suspects they may have been chocolate or ingredients for birthday cakes.

One tin contained salted butter and another orange-yellow cheese. “We did not know the taste of cheese at all and were horrified,” Wetter said. Her older brother eventually put the cheese on stale bread and heated it in the oven. It later became her favourite cheese.

The butter represented “a touch of luxury” for the children. Usually, so little fat was spread on bread that it only covered the pores. The butter from the CARE package allowed them to spread it much more thickly for the first time.

The first CARE packages from the United States often went directly to relatives or acquaintances in Europe. Later, senders could also designate particular groups of people in need. Because Lower Austria was in the Soviet occupation zone, fewer packages reached its population, and the region had no dedicated CARE distribution centres.