Memories of my blessed and beloved grandparents E-Book

Phylax Lüdicke

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 56

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Grandparents, as children could not wish for better and whom their grandson had the good fortune to experience for many years. These grandparents tell him their life stories. From their youth and wartime in Germany. World War II, post-war period, reconstruction. Everything becomes part of the family history. Events and episodes, now written down by the grandson, before they fade and are forgotten. Because our children have a right to know. Far removed from any glorification of war or trivialization of the Nazi era. And without hatred for the enemies of that time. But with heartfelt gratitude for the many evenings spent with our grandparents listening to their stories, which were never boring and which we could never get enough of...

Leseprobe

Dedication

Dedicated to my children and

my dear blessed grandparents and great-grandparents,

some of which I was able to experience for almost 36 years.

Grandparents that children couldn't wish for better.

Foreword

These are fragments, splinters as it were, of my grandparents' memories of the war and their youth, as they have stuck in my memory after more than 30 years. I make no claim to completeness or even to the correct chronological sequence; nor will I embellish or reformulate anything just because some of my contemporaries don't like it! Apart from that, I don't think my grandparents would want me to do so.

I am writing down the memories because I realize how they are fading, how I am forgetting more and more and because I think that our children have a right to know this part of the family history. They may not be so interested in it now, if at all, but I'm not getting any younger and the fact that I became a father for the first time quite late, at the age of 38, means that at some point it may be too late - quite apart from the fact that there is no one left alive that I could ask.

I have no intention of glorifying the war or even trivializing the political landscape of the years 1933 to 1945. Nor do I want to stir up hatred of the former enemies; it would not be right for my grandparents and it would not do them justice either. The events, for example the one with the fighter pilot, are due to the war. It was just the way it was back then; everyone, both civilians and soldiers, suffered - in all the countries involved! It is also completely out of place to apportion blame here.

I ask the reader to keep the following in mind while reading:

Nobody comes out of a war innocent and with a clean slate. On each side there are individuals who are "worth no more than a dead dog!" (Movie quote from "Gettysburg", but it hits the nail on the head!) On each side, however, there are also highly decent people who have retained their humanity and their good hearts despite all the circumstances! Criminal behavior is not a matter of skin color, nationality, origin or religious community; such behavior stems solely from the upbringing by the parents and, even more, from one's own nature!

My grandparents, both on my mother's and father's side, were grandparents that children couldn't wish for better! Of course, they always did everything they could for us children, their grandchildren, within their means.

I also never once heard Grandpa Julius say any insults or slurs about the former enemies of the war. It was always "the Americans", "the French" or "the English". Not once did I hear him talk about "Yankees" or "Tommies". He would have had reason enough...

I didn't hear much about the war from my father's parents, Grandpa Heinz and Grandma Else. At family gatherings or when friends of theirs came to visit and we reminisced at , it was usually just: "XY was killed then and there and there" or "YZ has been missing since then and there and there"!

I don't know whether it was because Grandpa was wounded in the war and he couldn't really process the horror he had to live through and which was to catch up with him again long after the war, and he preferred to suppress it, or whether Grandma and Grandpa were afraid that we children would one day judge them for that time.

I only found out from Grandpa Heinz after his death, on 16.I.1990 (my father's birthday), that he wasn't my "real" grandpa at all, but that he had adopted my father in his place. Dad's biological father, I was told at , was a nobleman: not a "Duke of", but an "up up and away", who allegedly left my grandma when he found out she was pregnant. Anyway, I'm not angry with him and I don't see why I should judge him. Only he, Grandma Else and the LORD GOD alone know how it came about and Grandma took this knowledge with her to her grave. I don't know whether he is still alive. My father told me many years ago that he was probably bedridden in a nursing home in Ludwigshafen/Rh. For me it was all hearsay and conjecture... As my father was born in January 1946, he must have been in Mannheim in March/April 1945. Many, many years ago, my father once showed me his pay book. He had been a private in the army, but that's all I know, because my father refuses to give me his logbook.

In any case, I won't mention my step=grandfather's name here, because I don't know to what extent his "new" family knows about it and I don't want to cause any unnecessary trouble.

However, if someone from this family recognizes the father or grandfather and gets in touch with me, I would be very pleased; this way, another piece of the family history and the family tree could be completed, which, moreover, would be my only concern. But that's for my step=grandfather's children and/or grandchildren to decide - not me. In the event that contact is made, I hereby guarantee complete and strictest discretion towards anyone, including my siblings, should it be desired!

Grandpa Heinz never let us feel it, on the contrary, he was immensely proud of his 3 grandchildren. All I know about Grandma Else is that my godfather's father - my step-grandfather Artur - died when Grandma was three months pregnant.

I had the extraordinary privilege of getting to know all my grandparents, all my great-uncles and great-aunts, 2 great-grandmothers, 1 great-grandfather and even 2 great-grand-aunts and 1 great-uncle. Unfortunately, great-grandma Frieda (the mother of my dear grandma Erna) died about 2 months before my 5th birthday. Great-grandpa Karl and great-grandma Maria (grandma Else's stepmother) never talked about this time - at least not in my presence.

Mannheim, February Anno '24

Grandpa Heinz and Grandma Else

Grandma Else was born on 02.III.1924 in Mannheim. Her parents were Karl Volz (* 16.X.1903, † unknown) and Anna Margareta Volz, née Wittner (* 03.VII.1906, † 03.VII.1933). Grandma Else learned the trade of seamstress and married her first husband, Artur Semrau Sr. in 1943 (* 03.X.1910, † 10.X.1943).