Ina and Stella Jungmann

My sister took this photo when we visited our grandparents in the Northern part of Germany. It is one of my favorites, because I feel like I can smell the food that my grandmother cooked. My sister documented “life in a foreign land”, and portrayed—among others—our grandparents, who live in a small village near Hanover. They were both fugitives in WWII and could not go back to their homes in Schlesien and Pommern after the war. They settled in this small village, Ilsede, and opened up a small grocery store. To this day, they still feel like “the fugitives” in this town. They managed to build their own Heimat in a place where they never fully felt welcome. And the old recipes—how can it be otherwise—are among the things that remind them of their home.