My mother and father met at a New Year's Eve celebration. My father who was almost 3O wanted to marry my mother quickly but she hesitated and wanted to get to know him better. My father said to her: "We can get to know each
My mother had three sisters and four brothers. I always thought it was a good looking family. There was uncle Max, uncle Bernhard, uncle Hans, and uncle Bruno, aunt Mitze, aunt Grete and aunt Madga. Uncle Hans was dying of stomach cancer at the end of W.W.II. When the Russians entered Gleiwitz and saw him in bed, they beat him with a rifle butt. He died a few days later. My mother and my uncle's wife had to take him on a sled to the cemetery. Uncle Max survived the war only to be injured by a G.I. after the war. My uncle tried to prevent a rape and the American hit him in the head with a flat iron. Until the end of his life he suffered from severe headaches. Aunt Grete was a spinster and fled to the nuns as the Russians entered Gleiwitz. She and the nuns were gang raped. Aunt Mitze had married an artist and lived in Stuttgart which is in western Germany. The Americans carpet bombed Stuttgart including the residential area of Stuttgart-Botnang and my aunt Mitze, her husband Erich and my cousin Alexa were evacuated to an attic in Marbach which is about 3O miles north of Stuttgart. My aunt Magda initially fled to a farm and after the war ended up in Munich. Uncle Bruno was the youngest in the family and is still alive. He will be 90 years old next May. Uncle Bruno was the only family member who belonged to the SS and, sadly, participated in the Kristallnacht. It has always puzzled me because he is the kindest, sweetest, most generous human being I ever met. However, he never had to serve at the front during the war. He was a druggist for the SS filling prescriptions for them - way behind the lines and safe from getting shot at - and ended up in the Alps at end of the war. When the Americans asked everyone to surrender he did so with a clear conscience not having committed any actrocities during the war and he was terribly upset that the Americans arrested him for his membership in the SS. While he was in prison his wife ran away and Uncle Bruno tried to commit suicide. Mercifully it did not take and he found a lovely woman after the war whom he took as second wife and who was originally from Gleiwitz. (This failed experiment might surprise anyone knowing Uncle Bruno was a druggist but uncle Bruno had a long history of failed chemical experiments. One good example is, when, at my parent's engagement party, he ignited homemade sparklers in my grandparents' living room and he burned the curtains).
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This is my uncle Bernhard. He
was killed in W.W.I. My mother named her first born son after her
brother. My cousin Asgard has a son who looks just like my uncle and it
is nice to see that the good looks have been passed on.
My mother and father met at a New Year's Eve celebration. My father who was almost 3O wanted to marry my mother quickly but she hesitated and wanted to get to know him better. My father said to her: "We can get to know each |
other after the wedding!" So they got married.
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My mother's parents are on her side. My father's mother sits beside him. My paternal grandfather had already died. Sadly, I never got to know any grandparent. They had all died by the time I was born. Father's brother Fritz married my parents and stands behind them.