Not remembering my grandfather.

[robinthefiddler]

I can’t remember him, because I never met him. All I know of him, is the stories my mother and grandmother told. All he ever knew of me were pictures and letters about a preschooler. He would have been born sometime between 1880 and 1885. He fought in the Cavalry in WWI. He married a non-practicing Jewish girl, about 15 years his junior. It didn’t much matter at the time, either the age difference or the nominal religious one. It started mattering in the 1930s. My grandmother saw no problem in converting to Lutheranism, so she did, along with her young daughter, but that didn’t really help. Eventually he sent them to her American relatives in 1937, “for a short visit.” I understand that at some point (a historian might be able to tell me) his marriage was officially dissolved. By the time the war was over, my mother was full grown, mostly American (though it took another 5 years to become a citizen) and neither she nor my grandmother was moving back to Germany. Not sure if he was considered legally married after that. They never did stand face to face again, but he wrote long, precise, letters. I once asked if he ever got in trouble and the answer was “Well, he was a war hero, and he was too old by then to be sent to fight.”. Too old was around 55 years of age.

I, also am a veteran, though times were very peaceful during my service (after Vietnam, and before Dessert Storm). I am older now than he was then, but I do wish I could ask him what things were like, when the Nazis rose to power.