What did you do in the war, grandad?
I have some hazy recollections of conversations with my mother’s father some 35 years or so ago in our only shared language, French. And when I say conversing in French, I had been learning it for barely 2 years at school, whilst he had forgotten most of what he’d picked up 30 years previously.

When I knew him, he and my grandmother lived in a flat above the grocery shop that they ran together to keep them busy in their retirement years. I think we visited them twice, three times at most, my mother using the excuse of the long ferry journey and drive being too much for her beyond that. They never came to visit us.

I do still have fond memories of the Christmas parcels we’d receive from them, filled with exotic sweets, biscuits and cakes unlike anything I saw in the shops. Silver-coated licorice, chocolate coated Lebkucken/gingerbread with a jammy centre, stollen.

So what kind of wartime memories did this old German share with his young grandson? He had been old enough to remember the First War, barely, and when the Second came around he avoided the fate of many of his less fortunate friends, relatives and their children – he even managed to avoid being drafted into the Volkssturm (German Dad’s Army) in the final year of the War – by joining a reserved occupation, eventually running a factory manufacturing vital military equipment - uniforms and boots. In the post-war period I gather he made a tidy sum providing clothing for the refugees in the nearby displaced persons camps.

As a young boy I do remember being proud of what he’d achieved, protecting his many Jewish workers from the Nazis, feeding and sheltering them all through those most difficult of times.

He died in the mid-80’s, my grandmother carried on for another 5 years or so after that. And by carried on I do mean carried on, lavishing every last pfennig of their savings on her 50 year-old boyfriend.

Around the time that Schindler’s List was released, using the publicity surrounding the film as a pretext because otherwise she would never speak of him, I broached the subject of granddad’s wartime exploits with my mother. She had a somewhat different recollection and understanding. According to her, the workers, some Jewish, many not, had by and large been slaves brought from France and kept under conditions that were barbaric even by wartime standards (although, admittedly, far better than most alternatives). It was from them that he’d learnt French; the workers being selected from those who could speak no German to ensure that, in the unlikely event of an escape, they wouldn’t get far.

So hardly an unsung Schindler, but if I’m generous then maybe a pragmatist without whom perhaps a further hundred or so Jews might have ended up in Auschwitz.

On the other side of the family, my father’s father also avoided active service, in his case by wearing a dress. He was an Anglican priest.
( wakeupandsmellthebacon, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 23:22, 4 replies)

Slavery or death?
No cake today?
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Tue 7 Jun 2011, 23:24, closed)

And by carried on I do mean carried on, lavishing every last pfennig of their savings on her 50 year-old boyfriend.
Good on her...
( The_Commander_of_Skips wears his sunglasses at night, Wed 8 Jun 2011, 0:03, closed)

Good on her...
Yes, I gather he was …
( wakeupandsmellthebacon, Wed 8 Jun 2011, 0:06, closed)

I thought Schindler was much the same?
A pragmatist who made a profit because of the misfortune of others, by saving their lives?
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Wed 8 Jun 2011, 19:55, closed)