i am lucky to have all my grandparents. that was something i heard
very frequently growing up. i knew it to be true bc i was the only one i
knew with both sets of grandparents.
i was often with my mamas
parents. on several occasions i stayed up to 6 weeks with them while my
parents travelled the globe. it was cosy and anachronistic and homey. my
granny cooked, always gutbürgerlich, and cleaned. my grandpa was in his
workshop puttering around. as soon as the sun was sining they were in
their schrebergarten - complete with gnomes - were they had their
produce. it was great.
when i was a little older, around 9 i think, i asked them about the war.
he
was fourteen when the war started and twenty and a prisoner of war when
it ended. his youth came and went during the war. there was seldom
flirting, next to no school. there was hunger and fear. and choices to
be made. when he was fifteen he was forced to leave school. it was
necessary to "be a productive member of society and do all he could for
winning the war". he grew up on a little farm in what is now poland.
near birkenau. he did not want to join the ss so he was made to be an
automechanic in the camp.
when i asked him about that he told me, that since then he believed in god, bc he certanly saw hell on earth in these days.
by the time he was 18 he had to take the gun and fight. he never told me more than that.
when
he was 21 he returned. but home was not there anymore, it was a part of
poland now. so he went to wolfsburg to build Volkswagen. it was all he
knew exept handling a gun.
he met my grandma at a schützenfest near celle. she had just turned 18.
she was 12 when the war started. my oldest son is twelve now.
grandma
was born in a wee hamlet adjacent bergen, the village that housed
bergen-belsen. her youth was formed around the fact that, if she smiled
to a stranger, lend a hand to a foreigner, was nice to the prisoners of
war - they were distributed among the farmers to help with the produce
and animals - she would be send to the camp.
two month
after the war they met and never let go of each other. she made him a
home, he made her felt safe. they had 3 children. one of them died
during childbirth. they learned, they travelled, they worked. they
visited moskau in the early 80´s in the middle of the cold war.
when
his already pregnant daughter married a hippie he picked up the
restaurant tab and smiled. when his first granddaughter was born with
bright red hair he shed a tear because there had not been a redhaired
girl in the family sind his own grandma.
he taught me
fishing, wood carving and everything about gardening. he bought me
sweets and hid them from my mom. i spend long hours in his woodshop that
smelled like his pipe and sawdust.
he held my firstborn. saw my twins and three months after his redhaired great-granddaughter was born he died.
i loved him.
