My wartime neighbours and their oral history

[abaris]

I often talk about my 95 year old neighbour, who's one of the last suriving veterans of WWII.

Now I had a long talk with his wife, while she was gardening. And it turned out, as a youngster, she witnessed one of the most gruesome episodes at the end of WWII in Vienna.

A number of austrian officers tried to avoid a fight over the city. So they contacted the advancing soviets to come to some kind of arrangement. Sadly, the conspiracy was revealed and it resulted in many of them being publicly hanged in the 21st district.



This picture has been with me for all of my life and I know it's history, but my neighbour actually witnessed it. She told me, as a very young person, this was the time, when she learned about the true nature of the regime. The images stayed with her to this day.

The hanged man was major Biedermann, one of the conspirators. Another one, who got away, was major Szokoll. Later a successful film producer, he always took the opportunity to warn against tyranny. He also was part of the attempt against Hitler in july of 1944. He was their man in Vienna, being an influencial staff officer. So, he got away twice, since his role in the attempt never was discovered.

It's eery to discover that something I  only knew from the history books, is the actual memory of one of my dearest neighbours. I really love this old couple. Since the day I moved into my current digs, there was an instant chemistry between us.

[Dom]

I grew up with stories like that, albeit stories that didn't make it into the history books. The major historic facts are generally recorded, but the average person's experiences are not. And after WW2 in Germany, people shut up out of deep-seated fear, irrational fear but still a valid reaction to suppression and war. My family partially loosened tongues late Saturday nights, when everyone gathered at my grandparent's house. They put me to bed in my aunt's room and assumed I was sleeping, and much of the time I was. But I heard enough to be shaped by it. Stories of digging through rubble in the search of useable objects and finding body parts. Stories of finding a piece of a chair here and one of a different chair there, salvaging bent nails and using rocks as hammers to cobble together a chair or a table...looking for pots and pans which also served as bowls to eat from (when there was food). Stories of buildings covered in notes where people were looking for loved ones - "Kurt, if you read this, I am alive. Find me at the old church every evening, Mary." and such things. Stories of fights among pregnant women over a piece of bread in a food stamp line. Stories of being captured by Russians and abused. So many stories....

The generations that follow totally forget or even never hear such stories and the human impact of war is forgotten, it is simply too painful. All that remains is a dry record of the moves the big players made. There is no real memory of the actual horrors of war. And that is how it can persist through the centuries...it keeps repeating because the real stories, the rapes and murders, the starvation and physical stresses, they are all forgotten. All that remains is a record of some chess game...the maneuvers the big players employed, and discussions of their success and failures.

The human aspects of war, the lingering fear, they die with the generations who lived through it.

[abaris]

My parents and grandparents were always open about the war time. Well, not always, but when I was old enough to understand and no longer a toddler.

[Dom]

My family was a mix of Nazis and "Jew lovers". The silence was deeply ingrained. They did things during the war they couldn't even let family members know about. Such as one of my many aunts (there were 10) marrying a Jew during the war and the girls taking turns hiding him. Grandpa was a Nazi. Secrecy was everything. But there were also things like kids in school being asked to write an essay about last night's dinner conversation - and going home to find that their parents were gone without a trace. People placing car mirrors outside windows, so they could see marauding gangs of young Nazis coming down the street without being seen in a window... Listening to the radio very quietly and covered with blankets because it was illegal to listen to Radio Free Europe... the fear permeating everything was palpable, and silence was golden.

[abaris]

My family was a mix of Nazis and "Jew lovers". The silence was deeply ingrained. They did things during the war they couldn't even let family members know about. Such as one of my many aunts (there were 10) marrying a Jew during the war and the girls taking turns hiding him. Grandpa was a Nazi. Secrecy was everything. But there were also things like kids in school being asked to write an essay about last night's dinner conversation - and going home to find that their parents were gone without a trace. People placing car mirrors outside windows, so they could see marauding gangs of young Nazis coming down the street without being seen in a window... Listening to the radio very quietly and covered with blankets because it was illegal to listen to Radio Free Europe... the fear permeating everything was palpable, and silence was golden.

The difference is probably that both of my parent's families fled to Hungary when Hitler came. There weren't any nazis, since my father was half jewish and my mother had a jewish stepdad. My real maternal grandfather was a nazi, but my grandmother divorced him in the early 30ies and hooked up with a jewish tailor, who was the only grandpa I knew.

That was actually the only thing, that was never talked about. The nazi grandpa. Although he survived the war, my mother's family and my mother refused any contact. Even when he asked to see her on his deathbed. The relationship between my grandma and my stepgrandpa is an interesting one. I don't even know when they got married. She carried his name, but I looked up the old adress books of Vienna, which are available online and, as late as 1938, they lived at seperate adresses with different last names.

[Dom]

The difference is probably that both of my parent's families fled to Hungary when Hitler came. There weren't any nazis, since my father was half jewish and my mother had a jewish stepdad. My real maternal grandfather was a nazi, but my grandmother divorced him in the early 30ies and hooked up with a jewish tailor, who was the only grandpa I knew.

That was actually the only thing, that was never talked about. The nazi grandpa. Although he survived the war, my mother's family and my mother refused any contact. Even when he asked to see her on his deathbed. The relationship between my grandma and my stepgrandpa is an interesting one. I don't even know when they got married. She carried his name, but I looked up the old adress books of Vienna, which are available online and, as late as 1938, they lived at seperate adresses with different last names.

Yes, the differences in stories is what is so interesting. Some Nazis truly repented and changed - usually the ones who were very young back then and brainwashed into the situation. Hitler youth was worse than any church when it came to brainwashing. Others remained intransigent - like my grandpa. Oddly though, he actually had no issue with Jews - he hated the Prussians. Anything north of the Danube was Prussian. He ended up accepting my Jewish uncle into the family, but lots of friction remained with my dad, who was Westphalian. 

I think one reason the anti-Jewish sentiment took foot so easily was the ingrained feuds that had existed for centuries. Grouping people was the norm. That's why I hate discrimination so much, the grouping of people into categories and hating them just for being in that category.

[Dancefortwo]

He also was part of the attempt against Hitler in july of 1944.

Was that the plot to kill Hitler?

[abaris]

Was that the plot to kill Hitler?

Yes. He was the liaison in Vienna to issue Valkyrie.

[skyking]

My oral history was very limited, most of the exposure was with adults like my father who had seen and done horrific things as a soldier and never wanted to talk about it.
They are all gone now, my mom and aunts and uncles, the neighbor who flew two missions as an assault glider pilot. That was a rare feat, surviving the first mission and getting out to fly a second one. I wish I knew those details. Was he in Sicily? I don't know.

[Thumpalumpacus]

As I wrote at the aviation forum on this topic:

I had a regular customer who always came in wearing a bright red Marine 1st Div WWII Vet cap, so I asked him about it one day. Turns out he fought on Bloody Ridge at Guadalcanal and later landed on Pelelieu where he got his million-dollar wound. I was awestruck into silence as he told me about fighting off waves of both men on the 'Canal and the sea at Pelelieu.

Another time, managing a framing shop, a guy came in with what was obviously a squadon reunion pic to have it framed. When I got his info for the work order, he had a Polish name, so I had to ask. He flew and fought over Poland and when they lost he snuck through the Balkans and ended up in England, where he joined one of the Polish squadrons, too late for BoB but flying Spits, in which plane he later got three kills.

It's one thing to read about it, but it's another thing entirely to see their eyes glisten as they answer questions from some young nobody about what they did.

[Minimalist]

My dad and all of my uncles were in the army in various theaters.  It wasn't until I started working that I heard about the navy side.  When I started in 1972 any number were WWII vets and one day several navy types - they would have been 18/19 in 1943 so 30 years later they were pushing 50.  One guy was on the Lexington II and another mentioned that he was on the Pensacola, a heavy cruiser.

I had recently read this passage in John Toland's "The Rising Sun."

"At Iwo Jima the weather had improved and visibility was good. Minesweepers 750 yards from shore drew scattered fire from the island, and the heavy cruiser Pensacola moved in to help. This target proved too tempting for one battery commander. His guns hit the cruiser six times before she retired with 17 dead and 120 wounded."

I said "were you on it at Iwo Jima?"

And he looked at me and said  "you know about that?"  I told him that I had just read about it in a history book.  He got this glazed look on his face as the memory came back and he said "they shot us to shit." 

Those 137 casualties were 1/4 of the ship's complement.

[skyking]

Two days after that, my dad was landing with the 4th Marine Division, 23rd regiment.

[Minimalist]

Iwo brought out two famous quotes:

One:




and Two:




The first was undoubtedly true and the second obviously false.