About Me
I am a 58 year old woman, born in New York City, raised in suburban Connecticut, living on the east coast of the United States. Growing up, I don't know that I really thought of myself as a "first generation American” in the way we do today. Sure, we were different, but it was only in later years that I began to grasp just how "not-typically-American" our family life was. Culturally, linguistically, culinarily, in our home life, we were German.
Much later, as an adult living in a diverse urban area , I came to realize that (aside from benefitting from white privilege) my experience was probably not that different from that of the recently arrived Ethiopian or Central American families living in my community. Our parents spoke the language of their homeland at home. They sought out familiar foods in big city enclaves. They socialized together with people from their homeland and our holiday celebrations stressed old country traditions. Only relatively recently, however, did it fully sink in that my father was not just an immigrant. He didn't just "come to America." He was an actual refugee.
My father, a twin, was born in 1932 in a city that at that time was part of the Republic of Poland but previously had been part of the German Empire (West Prussia) before being carved out in the wake of World War I. It would revert to the German Reich after the invasion in September of 1939, and back to Poland yet again after the war. My grandmother, widowed when her boys turned five, was working as a switchboard operator at the local post office by December 1939; the boys later were enrolled as "Pimpfe" in the Hitler Youth.
On the bitterly cold night of January 15, 1945, the three of them fled west ahead of the Russians, by the spring ending up with relatives in what was now the American Sector. Two years later they emigrated to the United States, to New York City, thanks to sponsorship of my grandmother's brother who had emigrated in the 1920s. When I was growing up my father never really spoke much of his childhood, his youth, the war, settling into America, any of it ... maybe I was too young to ask the right questions.
My mother was born in 1934 in the northeastern part of Switzerland, close enough to the border that during the war she experienced air raids, food shortages, and discrimination because her father was a German citizen despite having a Swiss mother and having been born and raised in Switzerland. Mom came to the U.S. in 1961 for what she expected to be no more than a year. Instead, she met my father, married, gave birth to me and my brother, and made her life in the U.S. At 88 years old she is in good health for her age, mentally sharp, and lives independently. Over the years she has freely talked with me about her wartime childhood -- to which she now attributes lifelong anxiety -- but, strangely, she never discussed any of it with my father or evinced any curiosity about his experiences.
When I was 17, my mother asked my father for a divorce. She could no longer live with his emotional distance or -- most significantly -- the interference and at times open hostility of her mother-in-law. As our family came apart, a side of my father -- rooted in his wartime childhood, fueled by his mother -- revealed itself and shocked me. In the aftermath we remained estranged for over 30 years. He would never meet my husband or children. I buried it all away and lived my life.
Then, in late 2013, some family history emerged -- property was eventually regained, Polish relatives "discovered" -- which upended what had been my generation's identity as German American. A second shock followed two years later when my father died. Suddenly old photos and documents, some dating as far back as the 1920s, surfaced for the very first time. Photos and home movies and audio recordings of my childhood, kept from me for 30 years, were once more in my possession. That which I had buried, came rushing back.
An urgency to know everything about my father's upbringing "dort drüben" (over there) and his life during the Kriegsjahren (war years) and Stunde Nul ("zero hour;" the end of the war) seized me. To try to understand him and my grandmother, to try to understand the events that shattered our family and broke our relationship, I had to go back and piece together, as best I could, our family history. His story is my story.
Much later, as an adult living in a diverse urban area , I came to realize that (aside from benefitting from white privilege) my experience was probably not that different from that of the recently arrived Ethiopian or Central American families living in my community. Our parents spoke the language of their homeland at home. They sought out familiar foods in big city enclaves. They socialized together with people from their homeland and our holiday celebrations stressed old country traditions. Only relatively recently, however, did it fully sink in that my father was not just an immigrant. He didn't just "come to America." He was an actual refugee.
My father, a twin, was born in 1932 in a city that at that time was part of the Republic of Poland but previously had been part of the German Empire (West Prussia) before being carved out in the wake of World War I. It would revert to the German Reich after the invasion in September of 1939, and back to Poland yet again after the war. My grandmother, widowed when her boys turned five, was working as a switchboard operator at the local post office by December 1939; the boys later were enrolled as "Pimpfe" in the Hitler Youth.
On the bitterly cold night of January 15, 1945, the three of them fled west ahead of the Russians, by the spring ending up with relatives in what was now the American Sector. Two years later they emigrated to the United States, to New York City, thanks to sponsorship of my grandmother's brother who had emigrated in the 1920s. When I was growing up my father never really spoke much of his childhood, his youth, the war, settling into America, any of it ... maybe I was too young to ask the right questions.
My mother was born in 1934 in the northeastern part of Switzerland, close enough to the border that during the war she experienced air raids, food shortages, and discrimination because her father was a German citizen despite having a Swiss mother and having been born and raised in Switzerland. Mom came to the U.S. in 1961 for what she expected to be no more than a year. Instead, she met my father, married, gave birth to me and my brother, and made her life in the U.S. At 88 years old she is in good health for her age, mentally sharp, and lives independently. Over the years she has freely talked with me about her wartime childhood -- to which she now attributes lifelong anxiety -- but, strangely, she never discussed any of it with my father or evinced any curiosity about his experiences.
When I was 17, my mother asked my father for a divorce. She could no longer live with his emotional distance or -- most significantly -- the interference and at times open hostility of her mother-in-law. As our family came apart, a side of my father -- rooted in his wartime childhood, fueled by his mother -- revealed itself and shocked me. In the aftermath we remained estranged for over 30 years. He would never meet my husband or children. I buried it all away and lived my life.
Then, in late 2013, some family history emerged -- property was eventually regained, Polish relatives "discovered" -- which upended what had been my generation's identity as German American. A second shock followed two years later when my father died. Suddenly old photos and documents, some dating as far back as the 1920s, surfaced for the very first time. Photos and home movies and audio recordings of my childhood, kept from me for 30 years, were once more in my possession. That which I had buried, came rushing back.
An urgency to know everything about my father's upbringing "dort drüben" (over there) and his life during the Kriegsjahren (war years) and Stunde Nul ("zero hour;" the end of the war) seized me. To try to understand him and my grandmother, to try to understand the events that shattered our family and broke our relationship, I had to go back and piece together, as best I could, our family history. His story is my story.