Ask HN: What does your grandparents remember from WWII?

5 points by avshyz 8 years ago | 6 comments

Two years ago I've been to Germany. I was just before leaving the army after an extended service (5 years) and joining an IT startup in Tel Aviv, So I thought I should travel just a bit before doing that, with a friend.

The most memorable day of the trip was our last one. We've rented a bicycle to ride to Teuflesberg, and on the way back we took the train (with the bike). Little did we know - one must pay an extra fee to get bikes unto the train, so we were fined. The whole encounter consumed too much precious time, and we were about to be late to return the bike. A hasty apologetic call to the bike owner, and 30 minutes of intense bike riding forward - and we were there.

While we were about to leave the store, the daughter of the owner (~50 years, or so) asked us where we were from. After we've told her we were Israelis, she offered us a ride to our motel.

During the ride, we've got to talk about everything - politics, history, and whatnot. And somewhere around the Jewish graveyard, she has told us about her father.

She told us about her father, as she remembered him - a kind, gentle, and loving man. And that he also served in the Wehrmacht. That reading about the war, and remembering the man her father was to her was almost oxymoronic. And that he had never talked about the war. The two of us read and hear testimonies by the survivors, and talked with them. But that was our first time hearing something close to a testimony of someone from "the other side".

That story resonated with me. The Israeli holocaust memorial day was held yesterday, and that story came back to me. If anyone of you, German readers, would be able to share his grandparents' story from the war, It'd mean a lot to me. (If you're not German, but would still like to share your grandparents' story - I'd also like to hear that!)

hackermailman 8 years ago |

The German side of my family were all radical Protestants who hated Hitler because he was 'too Catholic', so engaged in what we would call terrorism today blowing up and attacking local nazi party campaign buildings until exiled to Canada. Some others remained and continued terrorism, somehow not getting caught. They described their area of rural Germany as lawless since the majority were anti Hitler and police didn't enter those areas the entire war, and all refused military duty. Somebody should do a history doc on the crazy violent religious radicals in rural Germany during the war.

avshyz 8 years ago | |

Agreed! that's really interesting and I've had no idea these it happened.

Lordarminius 8 years ago |

My grandfather served as a medic in Burma during WW11.

He and many other young people were forcibly conscripted and herded from their villages to training camps in northern Nigeria,and after a short period were shipped overseas."They made us work hard and served a lot of meat at the camp" he said.

He told of the terror among illiterate young men who had never been anyplace outside their village suddenly being transported to war and distant lands. One of the young conscripts tried to resist the train leg of the journey, and when the NCO (a British Officer) was alerted, he hit him so hard on the back of the head with his baton that his left eye fell out. Some conscripts on the sea voyage jumped overboard into the waters of the Atlantic. Apparently, a rumor was going around that the British meant to feed them to an ogre named 'Hitler'. Despite this, he retained a deep admiration for the British colonial masters and their ways of doing things. My mother recalls that he would tell them as children "always wash and starch your clothes. Walk erect like a DO!"[1]

In Burma he was assigned to a medical post to the rear of the fighting. He never said much about the actual fighting except to mention that "many died",I recall he would say also "there were snakes and mosquitoes". His recollection of the Japanese enemy was that they were regular soldiers out to do their job just like the chaps on his side.

Grandpa had a photographic memory and was a compulsive note-taker. He recited from memory the name of the ship that conveyed him from Nigeria to the war, its captain and the date of departure. He knew the names of his colleagues and officers 6 decades after. Sadly, a younger me never took notes and I regret it now.

When he returned from the war, he got a job with the local authorities at a rural hospital (Nigeria was still under colonial rule). He got a high school diploma by correspondence at 52(54?) as he was an orphan and had never had the chance to go to school as a child. When he retired, he became a full-time farmer and later a clan chief.

He died aged 91 two years ago.

[1] DO- District officer was a British government functionary in colonial Nigeria roughly equivalent to a mayor today.

agitator 8 years ago |

My family is from Warsaw Poland. There are so many ways in which the war affected my family.

On one side of my mom's family, I had a great grandmother who was a covert operative for the Polish underground resistance. She carried information and communications during the war. She told us stories of being ambushed by german soldiers, once they learned of their communication routes. She hid in a secret hiding spot in a well to escape. Had friends die in her arms. She had to marry another operative in order to fake documents for a mission. She ended up falling in love with him, but was separated during part of the war and couldn't find him. She ended up re-marrying, and then later on in life when she was much older, spotted the man on a trolley but decided not to say anything since so much time had passed.

I have really fond memories of sitting in her living room when visiting Poland when I was younger. She was telling us stories of the war as we ate ice cream on a hot summer day. She was an incredible woman. She passed away a few years ago.

On the other side of my mom's family, my grandmother's dad and brother went missing during the war. They went out one night and never came back. Another time when we visited Poland, we went to the Auschwitz memorial. They have a massive book there with all of the names of people who were in the nazi records for having been prisoners at the camp. No one in my family knew what happened to the two brothers, but my mother, decided to look up their names. And their names were in the book. Since then, we contacted the international red cross tracing service. They mailed us copies of hand written documentation from the nazi. Both brothers were participating in an uprising, and were captured as political prisoners. One died in Auschwitz and the other was transffered to Birkenau where he died of Tuberculosis.

DoreenMichele 8 years ago |

My American father fought in both WW2 and in Vietnam. He told humorous stories about Vietnam. He died a few years ago. Only after his death did it occur to me that he did not really tell stories about WW2.

My German mother has talked at times about her parents moving the family to the country and using ration cards for things like cigarettes to hire 3 men to guard the house. They hid their food supplies in large wooden barrels, then topped them with potato peels (with a layer of material in between) to make it look like trash.

potta_coffee 8 years ago |

My grandfather was a kid during WWII, he told me about air raid warnings and blackouts happening in Long Beach, CA, which sounds really unusual because you never hear about that.