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I wrote in my previous blog that I found out something about my family history. I want to write about it today.

My mother told me that she had respect for my deceased grandma Anna, the mother of my father, because she had a difficult life after the second world war. I was not sure if I heard it right, because as far as I knew (and had experienced until 1971, the year my grandma died), the two women didn't like each other at all. So I asked her about the story:

My grandma Anna and my grandpa Hermann had two children: my aunt Hilde and my father Karl. For some reason my grandpa had managed to stay out of military service during the war ... until the so called "Volkssturm" (lit. "Folkstorm"; "People's Storm" ). In the winter of 1944/45 the war was already lost for Germany, but Hitler didn't want to hear about it. He was calling for all men older the 16 to defend the country. Every village had to send in a certain number of men. In the village (Merkenbach) where my family comes from it was 2 men. Willy the husband of Anna's sister Lina was responsible for recruiting those men. ... and guess what, my grandpa was one of them. He left the village on 25 January 1945.

Members of the Volkssturm received only the most basic of military training. This included a brief indoctrination training, and then a training on the use of basic weapons. The weapons they received could be any equipment available. Often the weapons had been captured by Germany in her five years of war. Volkssturm units were supposed to be used only in their own districts, but many were sent directly to the front lines. So was my grandpa. He was sent to Pyritz (now Pyrzyce in Western Poland), where the Eastern front was at the time. We know he got wounded very quick and from there (half february 1945) my grandma has lost any track of him. The guy that left the village together with my grandpa got "lost" along the line and turned up after the war alive and kicking. When my grandma Anna asked him what had happened he always said he was fighting together with my grandpa until a certain day ... (something that wasn't true my grandma found out later, he never made it to a Volkssturm unit).

Till her death she was hoping to see her husband again, though Red Cross searches and own research had shown here that the chances to see him alive and well were zero. Unlike widows of "ordinary" soldiers Anna and her kids had to wait for 2 years for a war pension. Two yeas without any money. She was furious with her brother in law, who sent her husband away though everybody knew that the war was lost already. The reason for my mother's respect was that Anna was able to make it up with her sister and her brother in law years after the war.