大象传媒

I was born in 1963 (Frankfurt) and even my parents are far too young to have participated in the war (b. 1939 and 1942). Only my father told us children once how he recalled the sun obscured in the sky by smoke and the day turning dark when Frankfurt burnt down. But grandfathers and great-uncles were soldiers on the German-Austrian side. All three great-uncles fell, the grandfathers survived.

I think for my generation in Germany and Austria it was harder to hear about the war from your (grand)parents 鈥� they were less willing to talk and anything heroic would not have fitted in with the predominant mood of guilt. Especially in Germany (the way Austrian schools dealt with the war was different) the younger generation from 1960s onward adopted a self-rigtheous accusatory attitude that must have made it hard for those men to talk of their experiences. In retrospect I sometimes am ashamed at the attitude we adopted as teenagers towards the grandfathers.

One grandfather, having lost an eye in the North African campaign and later surviving eight years in a Russian POW camp (until 1952) never said a single word about it all until in 1998-99 I briefly worked for an organisation helping Russian street children. One day he gave me a large sum of money and said: 鈥淭his is for the children there. In memory of all those Russian women who gave us POWs food through the fence when we were starving. .... And don鈥檛 think I am stupid, I have not forgotten. The cruellest things I ever saw in my life were done by Russian guards to my comrades. But that is not the Russian people.鈥� And that was all he ever said. Two years later he died.

The other grandfather, Erich Schmidt, was an officer engaged in anti-aircraft gunnery (Flak) training in France throughout the war. He saw little direct fighting until 1944 and always maintained he never killed anyone 鈥� an excuse we grandchildren would not let pass. Still we were eager to hear from him. But all we ever heard was stories of human kindness. In later years we children got involved in the aftermath of it all.

From late 1944 he had been a POW on a farm in southern France. He learnt some French and the family were very good to him 鈥� as he always pointed out. He loved farm life and having been born in a part of German that became French after WW I (not in Alsace-Lorraine but the Palatinate) he quickly learnt reasonable French. But of course, although things were alright he longed for home. After 2 to 3 years the other POW were slowly being sent home. His turn never seemed to come. Even his farmer began to feel for him. So one day he decided to forge a release document. He explained to us that he somehow got hold of a blank release document and had taken one egg on the farm. This is how I learned that with the help of a hard boiled egg one can forge a fresh ink stamp: by rolling the egg over the stamp of some officially displayed document on the village notice board and then rolling it onto another piece of paper. (I later tried it out 鈥� and the result did not impress me. But maybe the stamp ink was different then? I do not think my grandfather made the story up). But somehow the farmer got wind of the plan and talked him out of it. Getting caught apparently would have been really bad. Only three weeks later the farmer's wife came running towards him on the field waving a letter: "Erich, Erich: your release warrant is here!" So the family and their German PoW celebrated together his release and coming return to his family.

He returned in 1949 鈥� to meet two daughters, the younger of whom (my mother) had no recollection of a father at all. And my mother vividly recalls all the conflicts the sudden reappearance of a man in a functioning all-woman household meant. The situation has recently been quite well captured in the German film "Das Wunder von Bern" (2004), a film woven around the relationship between a 10 year old and his father, a Ruhr coal miner coming home from Russia in 1954 (the last German POWs returned in 1955).

It was many years later that we grandchildren got involved in it all first-hand. In the 1970s my family moved to Paris, my sister was ten and I eleven. My grandparents came to visit us and somehow this brought back to my grandfather memories from the war and the time afterwards. The result was that he wrote a letter to the farmer. His French being a bit rusty then, we helped him (my sister and I had learnt French like a second mother tongue). Farmers are not restless tramps and indeed the family still lived at the old farm. He had children and grandchildren, too and a very kind reply came back to us. After a short exchange of letters it was determined that a visit should take place to introduce my grandmother 鈥� who had heard much but never met these two. So one summer (c 1979) my grandparents, my sister and mother all travelled to southern France and met the old couple and their family. My granddad's French came back, my grandmother communicated with the farmer's wife with her hands, her smile and her incredible ability to relate to people. And the French farmer (!) explained to me why a grandson should not too self-righteously condemn someone for how he got involved in what happened in the world 40 years before. Somehow coming from him, I could accept it more.

From this visit came a friendship that consisted in several visits both ways over the years. In later years, when both parties were to frail to travel the frequency of letters and phone calls increased (my grandmother at 73 even learnt some basic French in an Adult Course). We children, called upon to translate, began to develop a relationship, too.

Today, of all the four only my grandmother is alive. But for us the memory how out of the war came an improbable friendship, lives on as family folklore.

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