I am planting for my Mom, Margaretta (Greet) Stockermans (Nieman)

My mother was young during the war and lived in Hilversum as the youngest of 14 children. She would sometimes tell my siblings and I stories of her “collecting coal” along the railway to keep warm especially during the Hongerwinter of 1944-45. Her older brothers were in POW camps so it was left to her older sisters and father to find food. They would walk for days but eventually find cabbage and bring back as many as they could carry in a wheel barrow for family, friends and neighbours.