Veronika Ursula Ammann-Lehmann

I was born in spring 1950 together with my twin brother in Dürrenäsch. My parents later moved to another flat in Dürrenäsch, towards Teufenthal, where we stayed until 1954/55. My parents had emigrated from Silesia/Poland to Switzerland in 1948 together with my older sister, who was three years old at the time. My father had smuggled my mother and sister across the Polish-German border. After crossing the border, the family first went into quarantine in Brunnen/Schwyz. My older brother was born there in 1948…

The family then found permanent acceptance in the municipality of Dürrenäsch. In 1951 our half-brother Heinz was born. A little later we moved to Lenzburg, where I attended kindergarten and the first grade of primary school. After contracting tuberculosis and the subsequent operation, in 1957 I was sent for a year of convalescence to a home in Amden in the canton of St. Gallen. No sooner was I back with my parents than they had a violent quarrel. We children were taken away by the authorities. Heinz, my twin brother, and I were placed in a private home in Speicher in Appenzell. Our older sister and brother were each indentured to different farmers. A little later my parents divorced.

I attended the second grade of primary school in Speicher, where the three of us siblings stayed until 1959. The foster parents at the time were not sparing with punishment! Now we were torn apart again. I did not see my siblings again until 1964. From 1959 to 1965 I was indentured to a farmer in Stettfurt in the canton of Thurgau, where there were beatings again. After leaving school at 15, I went to Unterentfelden in the canton of Aargau for a year of household training. During this time I had a room with the Scheibler family.

Then began my two-year training as a cook at the Sonnenberg retirement home in Reinach AG, which I completed successfully with a certificate of competence. For my first position as an employee I went to the Hotel de Famille in Vevey, where I stayed for a year. I then worked for a year as a cook at the hospital in Montreux. In the neighbouring town of La-Tour-de-Peilz I found a private position as a cook for a silk merchant. Later I held several six-month seasonal positions, in winter in the Grisons and other ski resorts, in summer again in French-speaking or German-speaking Switzerland.

My first marriage was short-lived. With my second husband I moved to Uznach, where for ten years we successfully ran a bakery/confectionery with several branches. Our three children, one boy and two girls, were born there. Because my husband then took a fancy to an apprentice, our marriage fell apart, and from then on I had to provide for the children alone through my own work, until they finished their apprenticeships and came of age.