For history's sake - Oma's memories

Current events have me remembering my sweet German Grandmother. I think back to the days of coming home from school and warming by the pilot light on the stovetop would be a potato pancake or some wurst, my after school snack.

Grandma Woywod was the definition of a Hausfrau - during her waking hours at home that apron of hers was secured around her waist and a feather duster always in her hands.

Sweet, soft features - she was a short round woman with a huge heart. It always amazed that she gave birth to my father and uncle, both large men - extremely tall and sturdy.

I loved helping my Oma. We'd sit at that enameled metal kitchen table of hers and roll out cookie dough, peel potatoes,  or snap beans. Then I looked forward to those moments, now I long for them.

It was during those times she would talk about the Motherland, the village she grew up in- Rosengart, East Prussia. Simple times although back after WWI her homeland was ravished with poverty. A poverty that killed from hunger. It was for those reasons she would travel to America, to be with my Grandfather, who made the journey a few years prior to her in an effort to start a foundation to build from. She followed after him in love and hope, and they were married on American soil. Behind her she left her entire family - everyone she knew and did so for a dream. I cannot imagine the courage it took for a young woman back then to travel on her own in such a situation. Looking at her you would never know the pains that trek and the years to follow left in her heart- all you would see was that sweet little hausfrau - my Oma.

She would tell me about the letters that would make their way to her from family, letters she had read long before I was born. It was the during wartime and after as she was raising her own children in America. During WWII her little village was occupied by the Nazis - she did not talk about that much but she did speak of the atrocities that came to her family and friends after the war ended, when Stalin's troops marched through and took over.  Those tales were vile. Families murdered, tongues nailed to wooden tables and throats slit. I will never forget her telling me about the letter she once received describing in detail how the people she loved and left behind were slaughtered. I think that letter haunted her from the time she opened it until the moment she took her last breath, decades later.

The house where my Grandpa Woywod was born (early 1880s)
Rosengart, East Prussia

My Grandfather never got over his little village being handed over to Poland and Grandma never got over the horrors she read about. Somehow my Grandfather's family escaped Stalin's troops and fled to western Germany and settled in the Dortmund area before the evacuation of East Prussia.  My Grandmother's family, sir name Keuchel, were not as lucky. Those who did survive ended up remaining in the area to live behind the wall that was erected, separating the west from the east..a before and after reminder of what evil can do.

My dad (Al Woywod) center and Grandma Woywod
is on the right. The woman on the left, I am not sure.
Germany - East Zone - 1950's

After my father was discharged from the Air Force and serving during the Korean War, he came home with a mission - to take his mother on a trip to visit her family who had survived and were living in the East Zone. I cherish that photo album documenting that trip and even though I am not sure who all the people are in the pictures, I just find comfort that they are family as records of my Grandparents' history in Rosengart were destroyed at the end of WWII. Searching out our family tree from that area of our planet is a near to impossible task - evil saw to that.

A page from the photo album documenting
the trip my father and grandmother took to
Germany- East Zone, in the 1950s

I don't talk about this history in our family that often and mainly because being German speaking about the atrocities of war, I have a sense of guilt..even though none of my family were Nazis. It is a guilt that doesn't belong to me, but knowing that hate spawned the terror which led to millions of Jews and other segments of the population being exterminated, I feel as if I have no room to talk.

When I was a bit older of a child and while my Grandmother still had her mental senses, I asked her how Hitler was able to rise to power. All I can remember her saying was something about hunger will drive a fool to their own death. I think what she meant was the promise of hope to so many living in a dire poverty, was enough to start the ball rolling. People were blinded by their hunger and the need to blame someone for it all.

Hitler was a hero to so many that they made excuses for him. The hero worship was because he was not a typical politician. He spoke to the fears and aches people carried in their hearts- their minds, and when he rose up, Germans were finally seeing a hope-filled economy - their hunger was being fed. They were lulled asleep with full stomachs - little did they know they were consuming a poison that would be their doom.

For many months now I've been researching at night the rise, once again, of hate recruiting the hungry. Some thought I was foolish when I spoke openly about how this last presidential campaign was giving energy to white supremacy and the new breed of Nazism.  History follows a pattern - we are almost a decade out of the great recession.  During that time and for a while before it, terrorism has ravished our planet - a generation has grown up watching their parents struggle to put food on the table. Hate has been brewing and seeping into wounds that have not fully healed from generations ago. A perfect recipe for disaster - a twisted organizer's dream.

Charlottesville was not about a statue- it was about steps towards a twisted goal of recruitment - the poison once again taking hold.

During those days of helping my grandmother prepare food for the family, we also did one other thing together - every day I would sit at that table with her and say a rosary together.  I do not talk about my faith much, as for me it is a personal relationship I have and one not open for debate.  At one time I was considered a devout Catholic, I have since evolved although I still hold on to the traditions of my youth in that I do look to my higher power and pray that one day our world will heal from the opens wounds of the past.  For this, I will always say a prayer.

No one wins when hate and greed dictates the moves of man.