Family stuff
Feb. 27th, 2022 08:39 amOn our way back from visiting my mother for her 80th birthday (which is actually next week, but this was when it was convenient for us to visit). In the course of the visit, she pulled out some boxes and folders of Old Papers and asked my help going through them.
Some of them are![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hudebnik Juvenilia. And I do mean "juvenilia". There's a "parenting diary" that she started shortly after I was born, whose last entry is when I was 5-1/2 years old. There are essays and term papers I wrote in elementary, intermediate, and high school. There's a play script I wrote when I was about 8. There's a pastel self-portrait, age 7. There are dozens of stories that I dictated for her to type before I was old enough to write them down myself (so we're talking ages 3-6).
And there's a lot of documentation from her family history. Among other things, I learned that my grandfather was held in Dachau. But not the way you think. By the time he was held there, it was under new management: when the Allies liberated the camp, they repurposed it to hold their own P.O.W.'s, one of whom was my grandfather Konrad. See, he had been born in Germany, but moved to New York (where his sister Hannah lived), became a U.S. citizen around 1932, and married my grandmother (whose family was from upstate New York). In 1937 he travelled with his wife and two daughters to visit his family in Germany for a month or two, and for some reason they stayed longer than intended (perhaps because they were poor as church-mice, and the German relatives owned several small hotels). Then the war broke out, and the German government said "Konrad, you were born in Germany; you're kern Deutsch, so you're in the Army now." Saying "no" to the government of the Third Reich, with his wife and kids at stake, seemed inadvisable, so he joined the army. Meanwhile, my grandmother Helen, a U.S. citizen by birth, was living in Germany with his family and two little girls, helping to run one of his family's hotels. She wrote to family in upstate New York and got a notarized letter that she could show the Nazi authorities attesting that she had no Jewish blood, which may have kept them out of a concentration camp. There are numerous letters, some in English and some in German, between the two of them while he was serving reluctantly in the Grand Army of the Third Reich. And they evidently got together enough on his military leaves to produce two more daughters, whose birth certificates have Hitler's signature stamped on them. (Oddly enough, those birth certificates, dated four years apart, are on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper.)
I've been told previously (although I haven't found any documentation for this) that Konrad was supervising several Allied P.O.W.'s as of V-E Day, and since the war was over, he released them. Not wanting to be sent to the war in the Pacific, some of his captives disappeared, and he was suspected of executing them, which would be a war crime; he was held as a P.O.W. (we have his P.O.W. ID card) at Dachau. But some time in 1946, he was cleared (we have the letter from Allied Command saying so) and released. Unfortunately, his U.S. citizenship had been voided by joining the German army, so he couldn't go back to the U.S., and was in serious danger of being a "man without a country". So his wife and four daughters got on a boat to NYC, where his sister Hannah welcomed them. It took Konrad two more years to be admitted back into the U.S.; he arrived in October 1948, two years after his family. They lived in East Harlem (and he ran an upholstery shop on East 77th Street) while trying to build a house in Wayne, NJ, but after the house site flooded several times they gave up and moved to Newfield, NY, where he ran another upholstery shop until shortly before he died in 1969.
Incidentally, we also have Konrad's apprenticeship contract, for a term of three years from 1918-1921, to learn to be a waiter, and his recommendation letter on completion of the apprenticeship. He worked as a waiter on trans-Atlantic cruise ships for a while, then at some point became an upholsterer.
Real people have complicated stories.
Some of them are
hudebnik Juvenilia. And I do mean "juvenilia". There's a "parenting diary" that she started shortly after I was born, whose last entry is when I was 5-1/2 years old. There are essays and term papers I wrote in elementary, intermediate, and high school. There's a play script I wrote when I was about 8. There's a pastel self-portrait, age 7. There are dozens of stories that I dictated for her to type before I was old enough to write them down myself (so we're talking ages 3-6).And there's a lot of documentation from her family history. Among other things, I learned that my grandfather was held in Dachau. But not the way you think. By the time he was held there, it was under new management: when the Allies liberated the camp, they repurposed it to hold their own P.O.W.'s, one of whom was my grandfather Konrad. See, he had been born in Germany, but moved to New York (where his sister Hannah lived), became a U.S. citizen around 1932, and married my grandmother (whose family was from upstate New York). In 1937 he travelled with his wife and two daughters to visit his family in Germany for a month or two, and for some reason they stayed longer than intended (perhaps because they were poor as church-mice, and the German relatives owned several small hotels). Then the war broke out, and the German government said "Konrad, you were born in Germany; you're kern Deutsch, so you're in the Army now." Saying "no" to the government of the Third Reich, with his wife and kids at stake, seemed inadvisable, so he joined the army. Meanwhile, my grandmother Helen, a U.S. citizen by birth, was living in Germany with his family and two little girls, helping to run one of his family's hotels. She wrote to family in upstate New York and got a notarized letter that she could show the Nazi authorities attesting that she had no Jewish blood, which may have kept them out of a concentration camp. There are numerous letters, some in English and some in German, between the two of them while he was serving reluctantly in the Grand Army of the Third Reich. And they evidently got together enough on his military leaves to produce two more daughters, whose birth certificates have Hitler's signature stamped on them. (Oddly enough, those birth certificates, dated four years apart, are on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper.)
I've been told previously (although I haven't found any documentation for this) that Konrad was supervising several Allied P.O.W.'s as of V-E Day, and since the war was over, he released them. Not wanting to be sent to the war in the Pacific, some of his captives disappeared, and he was suspected of executing them, which would be a war crime; he was held as a P.O.W. (we have his P.O.W. ID card) at Dachau. But some time in 1946, he was cleared (we have the letter from Allied Command saying so) and released. Unfortunately, his U.S. citizenship had been voided by joining the German army, so he couldn't go back to the U.S., and was in serious danger of being a "man without a country". So his wife and four daughters got on a boat to NYC, where his sister Hannah welcomed them. It took Konrad two more years to be admitted back into the U.S.; he arrived in October 1948, two years after his family. They lived in East Harlem (and he ran an upholstery shop on East 77th Street) while trying to build a house in Wayne, NJ, but after the house site flooded several times they gave up and moved to Newfield, NY, where he ran another upholstery shop until shortly before he died in 1969.
Incidentally, we also have Konrad's apprenticeship contract, for a term of three years from 1918-1921, to learn to be a waiter, and his recommendation letter on completion of the apprenticeship. He worked as a waiter on trans-Atlantic cruise ships for a while, then at some point became an upholsterer.
Real people have complicated stories.
