Morning Will Come

In Remembrance of a Collaborator

By: Violet Millhouse Gardener

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In remembrance of a Collaborator: What happens when a favorite nursery rhyme gets dropped in the middle of Europe in World War 2? Take Old Mother Hubbard, for example . . . Trondheim, Nazi-occupied Norway, Autumn 1942: Women are called on to survive with their family and their homes when men are called to war. Some have to make difficult choices, especially when they have hungry children and no way to support them. Judged harshly, there are markers in the graveyard for people like them: plain stone, plainly marked too. The name, the date of death, perhaps a bit of scripture about how the women who fraternized with the enemy, with German or Norse collaborators, would burn for their betrayal. But strangely, one day, people started leaving flowers at some of the graves. Perhaps someone finally figured out the mystery of what these women had really done in the war. "In life you love me not; in death you bewail me." ~ Norwegian Proverb