My family had a long tradition as bakers. During the WW2, there were fourteen bakeries around Victoria. There were four persons working in our bakery at that time. Ours was one of the more renowned and frequented. For example, our bakery provided all the bread for all the Gozitan hospitals. That meant that early in the morning around 7 a.m. One of us would start delivering the bread using a donkey and cart. He would go to the established hospitals, like the Victoria Hospital, the Lazzarett Hospital and St.Therese Hospital; and also to the emergency hospitals, like those at Manresa and The Bishop’s Conservatory. The latter two were taking care of Maltese patients who were hospitalized at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Another hospital was at Fort Chambray.

Soon after the start of WW2, bread was rationed. After May, 1942, each person was entitled for 300gr of bread everyday. That was too little especially for those people who lived in the city. They did not have fields to cultivate and to add up to these meager rations. Every fortnight, the Protection Officer would issue 80 sacks of flour. We had to go and get them ourselves with our donkey from a garage in Racecourse Street, today it is named Republic Street. 50 sacks out of these 80 would be used for the ration, and the 30 would be stand-by in case of an emergency. These 30 sacks would be used to bake bread for the Maltese refugees who were living in Gozo. There were thousands of Maltese people living in Gozo. In order for one to get his or her ration of bread, one had to present a ticket. We had to be extra careful about these tickets. If some sacks were torn, that meant that less flour was delivered. Those were the times were nothing could be wastes.

There were three persons working in the bakery on a shift basis. Wood was the only fuel to heat up the oven. For this, one of my uncles used to travel to Malta, to Bormla to buy wood from houses hit by bombs. Those who sold him the wood did not accept money, but they bartered it for bread. The flour was of low quality. It was ‘diluted’ with other cereals. It didn’t taste good either. Even its colour changed dramatically from pre-WW2 times.

Those were really difficult times when bread was more expensive than gold itself!