Anna Cisterino

Anna Cisterino, 92 years of age, died peacefully at San Simeon by the Sound in Greenport on April 23, 2018.

“Annie” to her American family and friends, she was born Anna Haala on April 15, 1926, in what was then the village of Tuschkau in the “Sudetenland” region of Czechoslovakia, now Touškov in the Czech Republic, near Pilsen. Anni, as she was known in her German family, was the second of three children born to Simon and Maria Haala, who owned and operated a small family farm in Tuschkau. Like farm children everywhere, she and her brother and sister grew up learning their chores – churning butter, pounding sauerkraut, and tending to the animals.   When chores were done, they explored the fields and woods, and picked wild strawberries and mushrooms, living the life of children in a simpler time.

Sometime before Anni finished her eight years of obligatory schooling and was entering the workforce, the Nazis were setting up local control after having taken over Czechoslovakia in 1938, and village life changed dramatically. Among Anni’s youthful experiences was being jailed by the Nazis at the age of 14 for “sabotage” when, after being assigned to work on a farm in a neighboring village, she grew homesick and ran away to return to her parents. Her father and older brother were both drafted into the Wehrmacht, and farm life was very hard for the women and children left behind. In spring of 1946, the Haala family and all the residents of

Article source: http://suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2018/04/81560/anna-cisterino/