(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

Had a long talk with my mother who actually did ask whether I found out anything (I wasn't so sure she would) and seemed to be glad to talk. She said none of this was ever talked about at all in her family, at least not in front of her.

It's beyond surreal, having gone through the remaining documents of the man who would have been my great-uncle, dismissal from his job mit deutschem Gruss, Judensvermögensabgabe ('Sühneleistung'), Bestätigung über die Annahme des zusätzlichen Vornamens - die ganze verdammte Liste von Nazi-Schikanen, and to know where it ended, and then, my mother going through the documents of my grandfather, who ended up 'minderbelastet' after the war; Something about an SS group he wanted to join, but was refused, and here my mother point-blank refused to pursue this further, obviously afraid what she'd find out. I guess it's always more difficult with a parent than a grandfather you've barely known. I'm willing to believe that he wasn't involved in anything too terrible (although there must have been something, or did they routinely change the whole police-corps in 1945?), but when he really once was in the position to warn someone he personally knew about impending persecution, how many time when he could not? What then? I still have no idea where his political sympathies lay (I'm guessing at least conservative, seeing as he came from a military family, and both my mother and my aunt have always tended to this side), but if he didn't have any real sympathies, if he just tried live through this, and still maintain some integrity, a functioning conscience, I don't envy him, either.

Then, pictures from the fifties, Christmas at my grandparents' apartment, my grandmother, my grandfather, and my grandmother's sister (my great-aunt) with her life-partner at that time, who was also Jewish.

Perhaps silence was the only way this was possible.

Looking at these pictures, for the first time I really understood how not talking, carefully avoiding any topics that might re-open old wounds, must have been vital at this time, necessary for families not to break apart. Perhaps it wasn't the psychologically healthy thing to do, but I can see the urge, the necessity even.


We found a letter dated May 1946 that must have been a reply to my great-aunt's request whether there was any information about her (ex-)husband. From the use of first names throughout the person writing the letter must have been either a close friend or family. Du bist ja informiert wie es den deportierten Leuten ergangen ist, so dass leider keine Aussicht besteht, dass Emil zurückkommt. (...) Meine Frau hat 4 Schwestern und einen Bruder durch Deportierung verloren. sowie deren Männer, Frau, Kinder und Kindeskinder, insgesamt 54 Personen.

Did she see pictures from Auschwitz and wonder? Forty more years with this knowledge, the might have beens, most likely not even being able to talk it to the closest family.

I never knew about my great-aunt's life partner until now; maybe they could at least talk to each other about the people they lost.

My great-aunt, who did talk about this, dying, in the hospital. Blaming herself, with a nurse as an audience. I was fourteen. I wasn't there; it wouldn't have made the least difference if I had been. Times like this, I would really like to believe that she's still around somewhere and I'm doing this for her, but i can't...

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this. I think it's such a good thing when people can find out these things about previous generations of their own family, just because it makes us think a little more than usual. I don't have any Nazi ancestors, but I have lots of ancestors who were slaveowners in the American South, and who helped commit genocide against Native Americans, and so on. I think it's important to know those things about our families.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading.

What surprised me most, and maybe shocked me a little, is to what an extent I had been part of that silence, without thinking much about it, merely on the default assumption that -- what did I expect, I wonder? How could I assume my family would have gone through that time more or less untouched?

It makes things much more personal; but it also feels right somehow, bringing these things out in the open. And if not now, it might be too late soon: Everyone directly involved is already dead.