Looking at Lore Ebke's beautiful paintings of flowers, no one could imagine that she spent part of her childhood in a Russian concentration camp.

Someone who doesn't dwell on negative experiences, Ebke's lyrical paintings reveal her heartfelt appreciation of life, which she in part credits to growing up in Europe during World War II.

Ebke, 71, was born to German parents in 1939 in the country then called Yugoslavia.

"The irony for my family was that the war didn't affect us too much until the Allied forces moved in toward the end of the war," she said. "Yugoslavia was given to the Russians and communism took hold of the country in 1945."

In that section of Yugoslavia, it was common for German families to send their children to German schools so that they could retain familiarity with their language and culture, she said.

"I remember pretty clearly the Russians coming in as the Germans retreated," she recalled. "The adults were so worried, and I remember wondering why they were so afraid."

At that time, Ebke's father was in the service and away from the rest of the family.

"We were put in concentration camps - this was retaliation because the war was officially over," she said. "For two years, it was terrible - there was a minimum of food and no hygiene."

Three of Ebke's grandparents and some of her aunts died during this time.

Ebke, her mother and brother escaped from the camp in 1947, with the help of Russian guards who accepted money to let them go. She said they must have been aware that the camps soon would be broken up.

This group of refugees walked from Yugoslavia through Hungary and into Austria, settling eventually in Leoben, Austria.

"War is a difficult thing to deal with," she said. "When we were in the camp, it was a matter of survival; when we arrived in Austria, we had to deal with life as we found it there, which was also difficult."

Ebke recalled the severe shortages her family encountered there, noting there were so many people fleeing Slavic countries for Austria at that time.

The most difficult part for her was not the physical challenges but the realization that she no longer had a home where she felt she belonged.

After a lengthy process, Ebke and her family immigrated to the United States, arriving at Ellis Island on June 10, 1952.

"It was very scary to come here," she said. "I was in the fifth grade and I had had only a half-year of English."

Eventually her father found a job in Chicago, and Ebke learned to adapt to living in a new country with a new language.

"When times were tough, people toughed up - that's what we learned to do," she said. "It's very hard on the children of first-generation immigrants because you want to be part of your new world and life, and this can create a conflict with parents that miss their old life."

While Ebke's parents never became U.S. citizens, she did following her marriage to Harold Ebke.

The Ebkes met in 1960 at the Lutheran Teachers College in Seward, Nebraska. They have two grown sons, who each have their own families.

Now retired, Harold Ebke served as both a teacher and principal at Faith Lutheran Church in Godfrey.

One of Ebke's favorite pastimes is getting together with a group of women to paint nature scenes that can be seen hanging in their home, reflecting the happiness that she has found.