Germans of Reddit, what is the family environment like when a grandpa or other close relative used to be in the Nazi regime? Is it just ignored?

RingoStarrVevo · 1時間前

I imagine I'm a little bit late to tell this story but here goes:

My Grandad was born in 1925 and died just last year at the ripe old age of 90. He was born in Leipzig, Germany, and always wanted to be a pastry chef. Unfortunately for him his Dad had other plans and instead forced him to become a Cartographer (map maker).

Before that though, like many young men and women in Germany at the time he was swept up by the grandeur of the Nazis. When Krystallnacht happened he was 13, and when I asked him about that night he said that him and his friends smashed windows - not because they wanted to do harm to any Jews mind you, just because the older kids were doing it and it looked like fun.

When the war broke out he decided to enlist in the Luftwaffe, against his Father's protestations (my Grandad reasoned that its better to sign up now and go through several months of training, after which you might have a chance to survive, than to wait until conscription and get sent to the frontlines to die).

Well that reasoning turned out to be flawed, as when it came time for my Grandad to fly (he was to be the aeroplane navigator) they had run out of planes. Instead they just dumped him on the frontlines with a gun to die.

On my Grandad's first day, as luck (or unluck) would have it, he was shot in the leg and taken to the red cross tent. Overnight the Allies took the area, and he was shipped to England in a Prisoner of War camp.

Whilst there, the soldiers were shown videos and pictures of what was going on at the concentration camps. My Grandad told me that, at first, nobody believed it. They thought it must have been Allied propaganda. But as time went on they slowly realised that it was the truth, and what was happening in these camps was nothing short of monstrous.

Anyway, to make a long story short my Grandad met his future wife one Christmas, when the soldiers were permitted to have dinner with local families. He fell in love straight away and married her after the war.

After the war, he was given a choice: stay in England and work on a Farm, or go back to Germany. Well, the only family he had back in Germany were at that time living in East Berlin, so he took a chance, stayed with the love of his life and worked on a Chicken Farm until he retired. He eventually had two sons, one of whom stayed in England (my Dad) and one of whom currently lives in America.

Anyway, to answer your question (yes - I know this has been quite roundabout but I never get to tell this story) we talked about it.

I once interviewed my Grandad for my GCSE History class, and talked about his time in the war. We asked him questions about what it was like (hence the story of Krystallnacht) and he answered as honestly as possible.

He sometimes made jokes himself (or what we think were jokes). For example, I introduced him to YouTube one year, and when I came back he told me how much he loved it - "Look! I can even watch my old marching music" proceeds to pull up a video of Hitler Youth marching music

One time nearer the end of his life when he was living with us (cancer) he suddenly looked shocked and exclaimed "Oh dear I can't believe I forgot! I can't believe I forgot it!"

"What did you forget Opa?"

"Its Hitler's Birthday today!"

I'm aware as a type this out that these don't sound very jokey, but it was very much his type of humour.

He was, when all was said and done, a very sweet old man. He had a lot of compassion for other people, and never once expressed any sort of racism or anti semitism. He was a supporter of the UK Labour Party for most of his life and was genuinely a great and insightful old man.

I'll never forget what he said when I asked him about the Holocaust for my History project. He said to me "We should never forget what happened. If we do then it will just happen again. We should never forget it."

We played Eartha Kitt's Under the Bridges of Paris at his funeral, as it was him and my Grandma's favourite song, before she died.

Anyway, sorry for the absolute wall of text! Thanks for reading it!

alphacentaurai · 1時間前

I worked with a woman in her 60's whose family arrived in the UK from Germany in the early 1950s (she'd have been about 12 at the time I guess). It was common knowledge in her family that her mother had been part of the 'war effort' back in Germany.

It really interested me, and we spoke about it at length. There was a common acceptance that no one would ever ask the parents about the war and particularly the role that her mother had played. At the time of her mum's passing in the late 1990s she still had no idea what it was that her mother did, other than it being non military but within government. She talked about it all with a real sense of (inherited) shame, so I would imagine that many families still in Germany with similar ties feel very much the same.

The_Red_Paw · 1時間前

My grandfather was a German infantryman. Fought at the Battle of Brody and was killed at Stalingrad. My mom was 5 when he died. She rarely spoke of him at all. When I was 38 I began researching my family tree. She finally gave me the only photo she had of him, his official military portrait in a Nazi uniform.

He looks like a real regular guy, except for the swastikas. He was 32 when he was killed.

As a small child my mom could not wait to be old enough to get into the Hitler Youth. The war ended before that. She lived in Munich and was smitten by all the handsome Americans there and then emigrated to the States in her early 20's.

She's 80 now and only just told me the Hitler Youth story last year.

I still have my grandfathers war diary.

EDIT: His name was Paul.

Loki-L · 1時間前

Well we are ageing our way out of that particular problem right now.

Somebody born on the day the Nazi regime surrendered would be 71 right now after all and there are fewer and fewer people left who lived through the Nazi rule as adults.

To have actually voted for the Nazis in last election in 1933 one would have to have been 20 at that time and thus born in 1913. The number of people still alive who fit that bill is increasingly small.

Of course it wasn't always that way.

When I grew up there were a lot of more people around who actively lived through those days.

Generally it wasn't brought up without good reason and those reason were few.

Thanks to the way the Nazi regime worked, very few people managed to avoid participating in the system in some form. Membership in organization like the Hilter Youth were mandatory if you fit the criteria and for other organizations it was strongly encouraged. Many ended up joining the party not out of conviction but because they just wanted to get on with life.

So for the most part after the war there were very few people who were not sitting in glasshouses and able to throw stones. Almost everyone still alive had been to some degree a part of the system.

The few who honestly could have held up their own past as an example of what everyone should have done largely refrained from that sort of thing.

For specific events it varied quite a bit.

For example when we learned about the fate of the synagogue in town in school the general consensus was that it hadn't been locals who burned it down during the Reichskristallnacht and killed the young man inside. It supposedly had been some youths from the big city who did it.

That may or may not have been true, but it a very convenient story for everyone to go along with.

It doesn't help that very few people came out entirely unscanted from the whole thing. My Grandmother lost her first husband in the war and my grandfather spent some time as a POW in Russia that he never quite mentally recovered from. So this whole era was never something you could bring up in casual conversation.

VLKBlackDove · 1時間前

I don't know if this counts since I live in the states but I'm related to Erwin Rommel, or the Desert Fox.

Whenever the situation gets brought up about him we don't really shy away from it. We just try to think while he may of been part of it at least he was part of the July 20th plot to kill Hitler

It's odd to think that afterwards Hitler promised him his family would be safe if he killed himself. My family kind of goes on because of the mercy of Hitler on them after the assassination attempt.

zerogee616 · 1時間前

At this point, basically everyone who was old enough in WW2 to be more than a low-ranked private/insert-equivalent-rank-here or who lied about their enlistment age is dead. There's a good few of the former Hitler Youth still kicking though.

That being said, I highly recommend the documentary World At War. It was made several decades ago, and thus contains a whole bunch of interviews from people of that time period.

TinnedBox · 1時間前

Ex girlfriend's grandfather was SS. When I met him, he said to her 'sad he's British, but at least that's better than Jewish or Muslim.'

glassfrenchfries · 1時間前

I happen to have a great great grandfather whom i know nothing about, i only heard of him and what he did through my mother who heard it through her father who still knew barely anything besides that he was a general, he never went to America however his wife left him with his kids to America before the war even ended (illegally i believe) since then I've been trying to find out more about him but it hasn't really been working, my family has literally removed his face from any picture he was in and his name is whited out of anything that would have it, he was literally removed from our history and it seems virtually impossible to figure out who he is.

paperconservation101 · 1時間前

my SOs grandad was conscripted in the Germany Army at the end of the war. As he was only 17-18 in 1944 he would of grown up under Hitler. He knew no other world.

After the war he and his wife jumped onto a boat to the other side of the world. Once they arrived they stopped speaking German. He never spoke of his war experiences until a few years before his death and only small things. His own children didnt know he was in the German Army until much much later.

I looked up the timing and where he was from. He would have experienced the Russian invasion. I understand why they never spoke of it.

From what my SO said the man never showed any racism towards anyone. Ever. That is pretty good going for a man who spent almost all of his formative years under Hitler.

Lard_Baron · 1時間前

This has been asked before and got this appalling yet fascinating answer.

NiMkoTlaGi · 1時間前

My grandma was still a child at the end of the war so she didn't partake in any way really, but my mother does say that she never really talked about it and generally doesn't like talking about inconvenient topics which she associates with her having lived in that time

Michaiahjoy22 · 1時間前

I had a great grandpa who was a spokes man for Hitler and from what my dad says went to his grave with some deep secrets. And had a great great Uncle who was an S.S. Officer.... it's Completely ignored... you don't bring it up. Sadly some of my family on that side are neo-natzis and see nothing wrong with what took place... others are ashamed but will not talk about it.

Lington · 1時間前

[removed]

paper_wasp · 1時間前

My grandmother was a small child during the war in Germany. She used to tell us the story of playing with her dolls in her room and looking out the window down the barrel of an American tank with five soldiers inside/on top of it. My great grandmother was so excited the Americans were there she cooked them a full meal while they bounced my grandmother on their knee and played. I can't imagine being a small child and having a tank roll upon your house.

wurzn · 2時間前

I was astill a little kid when my great-grandfather died, so we didn't talked about topic.

Only found some photos of him later with his company in front of trains and at airfields, nothing remarkable.

as other stated, you are asking it too late, many who lived during that time and served are already dead a long time

Arxxes · 2時間前

None of my Grandparents are old enough to have been involved. You have to be 71 years old if you were born in 1945 when the war ended. So in order to have some sort of memory of the time I'd say they must have been at least 10 in 1945 which would mean that they're 81 today. So you propably have a range of 81 to 85 year old people who still remember something but with the perspective of a pre puberty kid. How much politics do you remember from the time you were 10?

That being said, growing up in germany you'll watch documentaries and interviews of time witnesses one way or another and hear about their thoughts and feelings of the nazis, which to cut it short mostly boils down to "we didn't and couldn't know how horribly wrong they were...".

ikAAA · 1時間前

My grandpa was 15 when he had to go to war. Goes without saying that it wasn't his own decision at this age. He was imprisoned by frenchs in 1945 and was able to flee back to Germany til the war was over. It was anyway a really depressing time for him and I didn't ask a lot about the time because I had the feeling he moved on.

wurstel · 1時間前

I'm not german or austrian but I live in Vienna. I asked my colleagues exactly this question the other day and the answer I got was the following: People don't talk about this that much anymore, but the old people that were involved in the nazi party or even worse sending off jews to concentration camps and also knew what they were doing don't really feel any guilt now. The reason for that is that, at that time, that was the norm - it wasn't the "wrong" thing to do back then so they don't feel they did anything wrong. Edit: I mean they know now that what they did was wrong but back then it wasn't really wrong so they don't feel any collective guilt somehow.

pvbob · 1時間前

My grandfather flew a Messerschmidt fighter. Specifically to intercept british bomber planes. His plane was totaled when fe basically flew into a bomb/a bomb dropped onto his plane. He fell, opened his parachute and survived with an amputated arm to around the age of 78.

Not sure how he spoke of the whole thing, because I was 7 when he died, he would only really talk to my dad about it but him, being a veteran of a different war himself, never really told me what they talked about.

My grandmother lived in Silesia, which is Poland today and was hiding in bunkers from first Nazis, then from the Russians iirc. She was a little girl at the time, around 15 years younger than my grandfather, they met years after the war. She would speak ill of the Nazis and the Russians, and is still racists towards Russians today.

Nightwisher1 · 1時間前

My grandfather fought in the war and survived through the entire thing. He has a couple amazing stories of when he was a POW, if anyone wants to hear.

We treated him no differently than we would have if he had grown up in Canada his whole life. It's not a thing anyone held against him, and what would we do if we did? Excommunicate him from the family? Ridiculous.

SirAntonius · 1時間前

Most people who answer seem to be born in the US and dont even answer the question but just tell their grandparents story.

As a german Millennium i would say while my generation was openly talking about it because we learned about it in school my parents were much more silent about it since they had still witnessed some of the aftermath.

Thats why in many cases grandparents would actually tell thier grandchildren their experiences because we were alot more open minded about it.

Generally 90% of all men did not join because they had to and those who did did not commit any war crimes so they would tell the stories like an american ww2 veteran. Those 10% who were in the SS or comitted war crimes i dont know about.

So in General the topic is nowadays openly spoken about at least for those who were just soliders or teenagers. Those who were criminals keep it a secret since you are still pursued for it if it would come out.

maurosQQ · 58分前

I think most people had an idea that something was going on. My grandpa was a child at the time and they lived near Hadamar, where they killed mentally disabled and burned them. He says that people knew sort of what was going on, but that there was a big blanket of silence. He once told me, that he asked his father why thick black smoke came from the hospital in the city. His father slapped him for the question and told him not to ask about it anymore.

DieMikrowelle · 43分前

my grandfather was a pilot in ww II. he didn't do it because he was a nazi (he wasn't) but because one day a consultant came into his school and said: "i beg each and every one of you to join the airforce. not because you have to win the war - it's already lost. everyone knows. but if you don't join you will be forcefully put into the volkssturm. we all know what that means." so my grandpa joined the airforce.

after flying for 2 weeks he was shot down and taken into jail by the brits. he always told me how very nice they were. having him and his friends jump into the river and swim down a few hundred meters to take him out again and let him run up to make him jump in again. what a great game! so much fun! i was 12 when he told me. it took me a lot of time to realize that this was no great fun. it was torture. he would never admit to it though. afterall he "lived through it so you don't have to".

my grandpa dreads talking about the war. and even more he dreads talking about his father who - although not an active nazi - was a huge admirer of hitler's. he once met him apparently and raved about it to my dad when my dad was 6 years old. that was the last time my dad has ever heard of my great grandfather because my grandpa was not gonna have a nazi around his kids. to this day my grandpa is very ashamed of his father and will never speak of him. i only know my grandpa cut him out because my father told me.

my grandpa will turn 90 this year. he's of good health and i hope he'll make it through many more years. he's a wise and blunt man when it comes to hitler and the war.

he once told me a very memorable story: "people that claim not having known about the holocaust are liars. we all knew. we knew something was happening to the jews. they just disappeared. we knew it had to be horrific but we were paralyzed by fear. people don't lie because they want to look better. they lie because they can't stomach that they didn't do anything. nobody can stomach that. we let them die in those camps. we knew. we were just too cowardly to stand up and fight for our own neighbours. our lies are just the protection from our own darkest and biggest regret."

Shockwave98- · 1時間前

Just a piece of thought of a Russian Teenager living in Germany.

Wether these Grandparents supported the Nazi Philosophy or if they were "forced" into it is impossible to prove. Many claim that they had to do what they've been told to do and that they wanted to avoid any trouble with the regime, thus most families look over whatever their Grandparents might have done and/or Supported. Though, with the recent upswing of the Right Wing in Germany it's nice to see the eldery speaking up against it.

HulloFolks · 1時間前

Not German, but my Great grandfather was a lieutenant in SS and fought in the Finland War. He was a huge asshole according to my dad. It was never talked about to my dad and he only found out when he was doing some research for a play he was writing last year. He found a book titled "list nr. 1 of suspects of major crimes against the country" (Norway) in a bookstore and looked up our last name for fun. He had a long talk with his parents that day.

RoikaLoL · 1時間前

My great grandfather was a doctor during the time of the Third Reich. He always was very clear about how the Nazis were the biggest catastrophe that could've happened to Germany. Also, he claimed that he wouldn't join the Nazi party, even when the "Ärztekammer" (something like medical council/chamber or medical association) tried to pressure him into it.

After he died my grandmother and other relatives went through his stuff and surprisingly found a membership certificate that stated that he was a member of the party afterall, even though he told everyone his whole life that he never was.

That kinda shocked everybody and it left a bitter taste in many mouths, since nobody was able to ask him why. Maybe he was threatened? Maybe he just joined because he thought they were doing the right thing? Nobody knows, and we never will.

It really struck a chord in me when I heard because he was a very smart and educated man. I never saw a flicker of racism or xenophobia in him, but I always wonder why he lied about it? Maybe it was shame, I have no idea.

Flamin_Jesus · 1時間前

Depends on the family and the individuals involved, but I'd wager a guess that there's some awkwardness around the subject in every family.

In my paternal family, my late grandfather was a navy man who wasn't involved in any atrocities and barely any fighting (he served on a minesweeper and submarine service ship), and to the best of my knowledge he wasn't a fervent follower of the NSDAP, so it wasn't a big deal. He'd sometimes tell war stories, but it wasn't really awkward because they didn't involve anything shameful or dishonorable. My grandma only ever talks about how it was after the war, probably because she was a young girl still living with her parents (or more accurately, mother) in 45.

On my maternal side, things are a little different, my grandfather died before I was born, but from what I hear it's likely he suffered from severe PTSD, he was a violent man in a time where such a thing was still considered socially acceptable. My grandmother on the other hand.... Well, my mother has a load of unresolved issues when it comes to her, and part of that is that she has a bit of a tendency to defend Hitler and the third Reich, for the most part they evade the issue, but I've experienced more than one Christmas dinner that ended in a screaming match between the two. My grandmother has a hard time acknowledging that the Reich did anything wrong, my mother has a hard time acknowledging that they did anything right, so you have someone screaming about progressive social reforms on one side (which is true), and someone screaming about genocide and pointless wars (which is also true), while the rest of the family can't do much more than ask them to let the matter rest, because they're never going to talk that one out.

Scramming_Oscar · 1時間前

Related: the fiance of my grandmother was shot 2 weeks before the liberation during work for the resistance. He was recognized by soldiers, arrested and shot during his escape.

My grandmother never talked about him (only once), but continued to visit his grave. She is 94 now, so her health prevents her, she would otherwise still go

FancioPantsio · 55分前

My great-grandfather was deployed in the German army, where he was stationed in the Soviet Union (don't know where exactly) during the war. He took a week off to get married to my great-grandmother. When he came back, he learnt his entire 10 man-squad died from an explosion and he was the last survivor from the group. He was 20 years old. My grandfather was not a nazi soldier, almost none of them were. They were German soldiers. They fought for their country, not for the socialist party. You don't call a US veteran a democratic soldier. But what's the environment like? We talk about it like Americans talk about US soldiers, occasionally. There are some really interesting stories to tell if anyone cares. Though I have to sleep, so maybe when I wake up.

Priamosish · 54分前

My great-grandfather was a sergeant of the Wehrmacht, first stationed in the Netherlands and then in the East. He was later deported to a Siberian gulag and his family in Silesia were "re-educated" under the Polish regime. He came back a decade later and went on to live with his family in Western Germany, became a policeman and died from a heart attack in his 60s. His children all spoke Polish exclusively and had a hard time feeling at ease with him at first because they were 16-19 already and didn't remember him.

He had joined the German Army before Hitler to have a safe income and the possibility to build up a family. None of us sees him as a nazi, he was merely a guywho tried to provide for his family. My grandma says he was conservative but not a nazi. He always secretely gave chocolate and sweets to my dad (who was 4 at the time) and played cowboy and indian with him. To this day my grandma has a family picture on her desk of him in his uniform before he had left to the East.

IHans_ILanda · 1時間前

My two grand parents who are still alive are both 86 and only talk about the later stage of the war and that they suffered under it quite a bit. My grandmother likes to tell the story of how she needed to flee and so her parents sent her to another family, what was quite a common practice, and how their train got attacked by planes. She tells also about how much she liked her guest family and how well they treated her and still made education possible for her for what she's really thankful. Only once she mentioned that she quite liked the activities that were done in the BDM like singing, hiking and camping trips as well as all the sport.

My grandfather only once told me the story of how he was in the HJ and supposed to join the Waffen SS once he got older but his father sent him away so that he doesn't have too, he then became a driver for a German Officer for a short period of time and later was tasked with bringing the fleeing children from point A to point B. Because of all that he couldn't go to school a lot and didn't go last the 8th grade and doesn't have any school records whatsoever.

My grandfather rarely talks though and if it's mostly about how he didn't receive any education and started a schooling to become a plumber and how he met my grandmother but even on those stories he doesn't elaborate much as my grandmother interrupts frequently to tell how she had to flee etc. They are both a bit senile and it sometimes is better sometimes it's worse. In my opinion everybody should talk to their grand parents as much as possible and ask them what they want to know as the last people that witnessed the Second World War are about to be gone forever so that all records will be second hand.

But to answer your question: it generally isn't talked about that they lived under the NS-Regime as the conversations usually revolve around more current topics if the entire family is present, at least in my case.

Edit:

From my mothers side I only really can remember my grandfather as my grandmother from that side died very early in my life but he did avoid to talk about all this only once for a school project he told me under tears how he was ordered to assist a FlaK by helping the loader and remove the rotting corpses of cattle and other farm animals as they were polluting the air, he saw three people dying and was in Great Britain as a POV for two years. He was 12. He never told anyone else this and this was the only time I saw him crying.

funkenstein_1 · 1時間前

My grandfather was Wehrmact 9th army and was with them until the unit was destroyed at kursk. He got the ostfront medal, EK2, close combat clasp, wound badge (bronze) and infantry assault clasp. He was a Feldwebel (Field promotion). Our family are very proud of him and his service. He was a regular from 1935 and wasn't a party member. We all think of him surviving those winters in Russia more than the combat actions - truly a "man of Iron" to have lived through that hell as well as Rhezev, Kursk and Moscow and survive those battles. It all ended august 1943 in a remote field in northern Poland where he fell. We feel no shame because he was a soldier - not a Nazi.

2bitinternet · 1時間前

It's part of our history and everyone has a relative who was involved in the third reich. It was hard not to be.

My grandfather was a member of the socialist (not national socialist) party that became forbidden when the nazis took over. He had the choice: prison or military. He was tall and blonde - "aryan" how they used to call it. They offered him to join the SS (special military unit) after his basic training what sounded like a good deal to him. After all, that meant extra training, more money and not having to go to the frontline for at least another 6 month. When he finally was deployed, the germans were losing ground in france. They were losing the war. He knew that, his friends knew that and his troup knew that. So he and a couple of his army friends surrendered to the first american/british soldiers they met. He was a POW for two years because of his involvement with the SS. After that, he went home and got his life back together.

I get why he did what he did - he never was a fan of what was happening but he saw chances and took them. According to him, he never fired a single shot on the battlefield and although he wasn't proud of what he did, he certainly was proud of that.

BigSteffen · 1時間前

My grandpa was born in 1920 and thus in the "Hitler Jugend", the army, and so on. Since he died when I was young, I only know some information about what he did and what he experienced. Interestingly I got to read some of his letters he wrote to his family during war, which show a slightly diffrent perspective:

He told me, that he was a medic, and that he was happy to not have to fight
in his letter he wrote, that he as a "deutscher Mann" (german man) has to defend his homeland and "es ist eine Schande, dass ich nicht an der Front kämpfen darf" (it is a shame, that he is not allowed to fight on the fore)
he showed me a picture of him and his comrades and started to tear up, when he told me "alle von ihnen sind gefallen, ich habe keinen wiedergesehen" (they all died, I never saw anyone of them again)
in his letters he just wrote "an jeder Front wird gewonnen" (on every fore we win)

These things quite sticked to me, even though he told me this/I read this about 13 years ago. Furthermore he was never racist, but, as far as I heard from my family, was not a nice man.

Akraya · 1時間前

My mothers side is Austrian and I'll try and retell as best I can.

Her father was in the Hitler youth which was pretty dismal, one pair of shoes a year, barely enough rations/food to survive on. Her great-grandfather was in the Austrian army, we have a picture of him in uniform, swastikas and all.

From what I understand from talking about it with my mother, they didn't have a choice whether or not to be in Hitler youth or the army, it was like conscription.

As her great-grandfather got older he would have flashbacks and he would take all the books in the house and burn them in the backyard.

My family doesn't really talk openly about it, it wasn't a good time for my family and I can only get these stories from my mother. She used to talk to her grandmother about it and she told stories of hiding food and livestock in the woods so the army wouldn't take them, and about the nearby caves where there was a lot of people hiding. My mother also has stories of finding bullet casings, mines and knives in the local lakes when she was younger.

FreedomWaterfall · 1時間前

My grandfather was part of the Hitlerjugend, but only joined, when not joining was sorta punished. Like weaker grades and such.

When he was 14, in 1945, he was ordered to the frontline, where the US troops were approaching the Rhine, about 30 kilometers from our hometown. When he arrived, he saw that the massive artillery wasn't firing at an angle, to cover more distance, they were firing horizontally over the river. When my grandfather realized this meant either death or becoming a pow, he deserted and ran the 30 something kilometers home, with two of his best friends.

He's been very vocal about his disgust with the regime to me an my sister, his fear about being caught and hanged when he was running for his life from the front. He's only opened up in revent years, as he's getting older.

So technically he was part of the regime, but an unwilling one, it's not often spoken about, because it hurts him a lot when he does, so we let him pick the moments.

Chapstickflap · 55分前

Well, my opa was drafted and we realize that most germans didn't really have the option to not be part of the nazi system. But it is troubbling that the AFD party is using a lot of the same rhettoric the nazis used when they were rising. I hope we don't make the same mistake we made then.

RealisticPatriot · 45分前

My great grandfather was a guard at Auschwitz during the war. I never got to meet him but his son my grandfather tells the story pretty well. My Great grandad Gustavez was a guard and my great grandma ended up getting interned because she was a practicing Jew of all Jewish heritage.

Great grandad ended up falling for my great grandma during the internment and he fell for her hard. He decided that it was worth the risk to make a go of it and he stole her away during a dark night and they began their journey to America.

They ended up migrating across America to Las Angeles, where my great grandparents would settle. Gustavez was also an artist and ended up meeting and working for Walt Disney as the head painter of the backdrops for Disney movies. Most backdrops from the 1950's Disney movies were hand painted by my great grandpa, my aunt still has a few of the original backdrops in her house.

Both of my great grandparents lived until right before I was born in 1990 so unfortunately I didn't get to hear the story from Gustavez himself.

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