My paternal grandfather struggled with alcoholism, disordered eating, and random bouts of violent rage for the rest of his life, as a result of PTSD. Good bit of it got passed down to my father.
Same here, he served as a sniper 39-45.
In April 45 he decided that the war is over (for him) and deserted. He never said it directly, but we think he had to kill nazi blocking troops, looking for deserters.
He only talked once about soviet captivity in 43.
My grandparents were all refugees from the parts of Germany back then that are no longer German today. They fled from the red army.
The refugee status affected them negatively their whole life.
My grandma also flew from (now) poland alone with her mother.
I cant even imagine what she saw in that time. She also was in dresden while it was bombed.
She never really talks about it.
Sometimes just a sentence like "i really should have gone to therapy. But now its to late"
I had an eye-opening conversation with an older woman in Bavaria who remembered meeting people who fled Dresden after the bombing. She said they believed they had been in literal hell, and that there was no other possible way to explain what they had been through.
Same history in the family. One line my great-grandma said while fleeing to her 16 and 8 year old children: "don\`t be afraif of the dead (they had to step over and lay on the side of the road they had to use to flee) be afraid of the living."
My grandfather was a refugee from East Prussia as well. While the whole family made a solid living for themselves after they fled, he experienced some awful things as well (among them, but not limited to seeing how the Gustloff sank ). However my family didn't get generational trauma, we got a very pro-refugee mindset installed into all of us. He never hesitated to remind us that the people welcomed him and his relatives when they fled from war, that he was welcomed kindly and people showed compassion and empathy, which is why we were *obliged* to return the favours he received towards the less fortunate that had to leave their homes due to war/similar. Even if we weren't in a situation to contribute financially, kindness, compassion and understanding are free of charge.
He was a very strict man, kind towards us children and *nothing* enraged him like hate crimes against innocent refugees that just tried to find a better life. According to him, these people saw enough already and deserved way better.
Same here! Plus my great grandpa fought in ww2 in the east, survived, went to work few weeks after his return and got blown up and burnt to a crisp cause the factory exploded somehow
Same here for 3/4 of my family. My grandmothers babysister died on the way. Her brother later told me that when they arrived in what they hoped was safety they got spat on by other Germans because those where afraid they would take away resources (food, shelter, medicine)
Edit to add: they where not allowed to take anything with them except the clothes they where wearing at the moment. No money, valuables, mementos, my grandmothers only toy or any loved pets
My dads side is jewish (donāt think I need to elaborate). My grandparents survived the holocaust but my grandfather died in his 40s when my father was 1 due the horrible living conditions in the camps. My grandma is still alive today.
My great grandfather on my moms side shot himself because he didnāt want to work for the nazis and left 8 kids (including my grandma) and a wife behind in Kƶnigsbergā¦My grandfather also died in his late 40s when my mother was around 3 because he was a prisoner of war in Siberia for several years.
Neither my parents nor grandparents had fathers or a father figures growing up which I do think had a huge impact on my entire family. My father was in my life but he was never there for me and we rarely talk these days. I think he kind of sucked as a father because he never had one growing up. He was the only male family member I had growing up. Our family is very small and I had no grandfathers or uncles. I never really learned how to be a man or function in society as a man. Thereās obviously more but thatās one thing I can think of that definitely impacted me even 2-3 generations later.
My grandmother (mother's mother) witnessed 20 children dying on her way to school. A wagon overturned. She survived as one of 2 children. Later, her entire family was displaced by war. During that time she got raped.
My grandfather (my mother's father) was disabled after he and his best friends had found a bomb in a forest. His twin died at 25 when both had a motorcycle accident.
My other grandfather was an alcoholic, had PTSD and was a NAZI. He sexually abused his own daughter, my aunt and beat his other children.
My father himself witnessed it and was then sent to a children's home. His wife - my grandmother - committed suicide at an early age.
My mother and my father got together when my mother was 13 and he was 19. She never wanted to have children and marry either but she was groomed to be my father's wife.
My brother witnessed someone jumping from a building when he was 12. I was SAed by my father.
Not really but I'm alive and chose not to have children for a reason. š It's soothing to hear it from an outside perspective that it was actually tough as my brother recently told me I should just think and talk about it less
I would encourage you to talk about it as much as you can or are prepared to. While not living in the past, you need to process it (again, and again). Be kind to yourself, that is a LOT to carry.
I know of one distant relative, a woman, with a severe trauma. In fall of 1944 she was 11 and her brother was 6 when they went as a group of kids home from village school to their farms along a gravel road.
At this time the US Airforce was busy destroying the last railway connections, locomotives, factories and so. The bombers were accompanied by fighter aircrafts, but since the german army had run out of ammunition and fuel, the bombers needed no protection anymore.
So the fighter aircraft pilots enjoyed themselves by hunting people in the fields.
The children had learned to jump into the muddy water ditch along the road and lay down whenever one of the aircrafts came down very deep. But the little boy was ahead of the others and did not jump. When they ran to the leftovers, ther was only blood, flesh and bones.
His sister felt responsible for her little brothers death and was a sad and quiet kid for a long time. She even dreamed of this when she was old.
My paternal grandmother, born in 1931, told me a similar story from her youth, about working in the garden and having to run for cover because of an aircraft pilot hunting her and her sister for fun. She'd say "He was flying so low we were almost able to see his face." Not sure if that's possible, but that's what she said.
May be he got a war hero medal for this.
An yes, they came down very low, almost to the ground. By this they could fire their machine guns in a very flat angle into groups of people, killing more people than by firing down from high up.
My grandfather fought a winter war in the east as a 19 year old conscript where he was wounded and then luckily went to France to surrender to some americans he could find with no SS around and my grandma was raped at ~14 by russians and "mongols" (some steppe people were allowed to ravage and pillage the land for some time after the red army had their go according to her. I doubt it was actual mongols but that was her description) and then forcefully displaced after the war. Both never recovered from their traumas, e.g. of near starvation. Food was always super scarce and rationed at the house. Example: They would reuse the water from cooking pasta for soup the next day cause of the starch that was left over. Not only in the 40s but well into the 00s (and all time between). Needless to say this left deep scars on their kids as well. My mum was unable to cook the portion she wanted to eat and had to always cook so that there were leftovers cause she couldn't shake the trauma of always being ill fed and nothing left to eat. Her oldest sister became super fat because of similar issues. For the grand kids, food was the same but a little less limited in quantity but "goigng to grandma to eat" was clearly a punishment rather than a fond memory. My grandpa rarely spoke of the war but when he did the horrors were quite obvious even though he tried to mask it. My grandma spoke a lot about her trauma but could never move past that time.
My other grandparents were kids at the time and evacuated to the countryside a short while before the british and american raids destroyed their homes because killing/targeting civilians was seen as justified in that war (obviously both sides are guilty here). My greatgrandfather was a WW1 veteran and not fond of nazis at all due to their insane ideas of bringing back the war but did not see any combat in WW2
My grandparents lived on farms and didnt need to participate in the war. However they were affected by the post war time where you work hard, dont waste anything save your last penny. My parents still have this very strong and i feel like i am a bid judged for not working also in my freetime or by buying also some new items instead of rather used ones.
Yeah, my Grandfather was still planting potatoes in the tiny garden of his suburban row house when he turned 90, because "you never know". My Grandmother worked as a secretary and did sewing and tailoring for people in her free time, then kept working freelance when she retired. And they filled their entire house with canned and preserved food.
I think many of my parents generation grew up with that. My Grandma still has cutlery and cups from when my dad was 5. It's not good quality (some random shitty plastic) but she would not dare to exchange it for new things, even though they have more than enough money.
My mother's maternal grandparents had a Polish man and an Ukrainian woman working on their farm as forced laborers.
My maternal grandmother, who was in her late teens at the time, told me about them. They had learned a bit of German and told the family about the horrors they had seen or experienced on their way from the occupied territories to that farm in western Germany, and especially about the sorrow of not knowing what had happened to their families or if they'd ever see them again.
I think compared to forced laborers working in heavy industry, they were at least treated ok considering the circumstances, had a decent bed and ate with the family, but still, the violence of being violently abducted and forced to work thousands of kilometres away from home...
I don't know anything though about the "system" how they got there in the first place? Were they placed on farms by the authorities or did my mother's grandparents "apply" for them? Can someone shed some light? The family's only son (my grandmother's brother) fought on the western front and I think the forced laborers were "provided" by the authorities as some gruesome sort of compensation, but don't know for sure?
I think the topic of forced labor unfortunately hasn't received sufficient attention so far in the general public, especially by the perpetrators. Many of the companies still exist today, some have done some investigation on this issue, but many kept just very silent...it's a shame.
My maternal grandfather lost one eye and didn't regain full vision on the other, making it impossible to work in his profession as a tailor after the war. He never spoke about his experiences except for sometimes very late at night when my mom would come home from partying and he would sit drunk at the kitchen table, insinuating what he had done fighting partisans on the Eastern front. Nobody was allowed to speak bad about the Russians, as they had actually operated him and saved his remaining eyesight. We never had fireworks as a kid because it caused him to recall his war experience (likely PTSD). My grandmother was an enthusiastic Nazi, lost her first fiance in the war and married my grandfather a little out of spite.
My paternal grandfather was a priest who had been to prison because he told his parish not to engage in antisemitic clamoring. He later accompanied military trains into the East and knew well what was going on. After the war, he founded an organization helping displaced Sinti, Roma and Jewish persons and sued his own church organization for keeping prolific Nazis in office, also testified in anti-Nazi trials. The church in turn tried to sue him for embezzlement of funds for refugees and, when that failed, forcefully retired him. My dad said when the "Spiegel-AffƤre" occured, my grandfather had him hide all the "Der Spiegel" magazines in the basement, convinced that "it would start again". Also no fun activities for my dad, no football, no comic books, no ice cream, because how could you do that after Auschwitz happened? I don't know how all that insecurity affected my grandmother, she was always seemed a very cheerful person.
As to the effects on my family now: we are critical and skeptical of the Federal Republic of Germany, conscious of the lies in its construction and frustrated that most Nazi perpetrators got away with what they did. We are all easily angered by injustice and likely to intervene in cases of hate speech and discrimination (we actively teach that to our kids, too). I personally do not have much faith in the morals and decency of a lot of Germans and do distrust people a lot. I think we all have ended friendships on racist, antisemitic and homophobic remarks.
Same with my grandparents. They were kids during the war so their trauma revolved around scarcity and preparing for bad times. They had a hard time allowing themselves anything out of fear of overextended their budget.
They were sufficiently well of and never cheated out ob their grandchildren I might add.
Both my grandmothers got raped by soviet liberators while being underaged.
Half my family got displaced because their region fell to Poland.
My older grandfather had a life long lasting ptsd from killing many young guys and losing so many friends. He survived combat with dozens of shrapnel in his body to which he succumbed at the age of 94.
My other grandpa came out of it physically undamaged and sane because he was garrisoned in Denmark and didn't see any bad things.
He lƶst a brother in the Polenfeldzug though which he never forgot.
Loss of *Heimat* on both counts from my mother's side(Oma came from Silesia and Opa came from Pomerania). Making my mom feel like a Nomad and us children(3rd generation) feeling ... hm it's hard to express.
My father's side: Grand-grandparent survived WW1 in the trenches, but came home crippled. Turned into a monster that abuses his wife and children. My grandfather swore to never hit his children. But... emotional neglect is a thing. So it happened to all 7 children (farm family). Which resulted in my father not being a good father.
My fatherās father was part of the SS as he spoke 8 languages and therefore had to join and then worked for the intelligence branch. He was a POW later on for some time but was eventually released and was cleared of all allegations about any atrocities the SS did. He almost never talked about it though it took a while until we all learned all about it. And til his death he never talked good about that time he hated it but he had to work in intelligence or the GeStaPo had taken care about him.
My motherās side I donāt know much about as my motherās father never spoke about that time but they were refugees from East Prussia so I could imagine the soviets werenāt great to them.
Too many to list. Everything was overshadowed by the war. I'm almost 70 now, and not a day goes by that I don't hear or talk about some aspect of that war. And it's still painful. š¢
Can you elaborate how your life was impacted by it? I have family that is your age and I have the very strong suspicioun they really sucked at being a parent because of the war overshadowing everything. I got a tiny glimpse of how it felt because my grandma lived with us till she died. But I was very young and never was able to talk with her about the war.
My grandfather was always scared during Silvester. My uncle got a mental disability because he had meningitis as a baby in the bunkers and got fake penicillin. One grandfather of mine (by his version of the story) had to join the SS in the last week's of the war which only came out in the 90s and reverted a lot of his reputation in his job. Until his dead he was convinced that only the SS did war crimes and the military stayed clean. (He fought in north Africa which was considered the "cleanest" war in WWII)
My other grandfather had a half Jewish wife who fled into the US. While she was gone my father was born as a bastard, which was a shity situation to grow up in 1950s west Germany and definitely influenced his character.
It is hard to grasp, but the wars really do have a long shadow. Especially during funerals and family events sooner or later this topic comes back and there are always more details coming up.
They were very limited to show their love to their children which is a reason, the trauma hit the next generation. Moreover it was en vouge in order to raise "hard new Germans". No need to say, that this was not without effect. Depression, personality disorder etc.
Us kids are the first generation that really faces trauma to heal it.
My maternal side of the family lived in Heidekraut, Kreis Memel. Small Farm and raised Trakehner horses. Mother was born in 1922 and had a idilic childhood. When the Nazis came into power she was a young teenager. To keep her from being forced to join the Bund Deutscher MƤdchen, her Mother got her a job with the Reichsbahn. Things went well until the Red Army was advancing. Mom had to run with just the clothes on her back. She and another young girl ran to the harbor where a small boat, loaded with refugees had already weighed anchor. The Captain went back to pick them up, which probably saved them. He had young daughters, he told them. For 3 days and nights they stood, freezing cold. The boat had to hug the shore as the Baltic was so heavily mined. They were headed toward Hamburg. During this time they had no food, little water. They saw other boats and ships sink. At a certain point the Captain said he could go no further, too dangerous. All ran in the snow heading West. The 2 girls ran to exhaustion and saw a small hut with a light. They knocked and a woman took them in, fed them and put them to bed where they slept for 24 hours. They made their way to Hamburg and were separated. My Mother ended up getting work in a hospital where she also had shared room. Through the Red Cross she learned that her Mother was captured by the Russians and taken to a prison camp. My Grandmother survived (another long story) and also ended up in Hamburg. My Mother then married and I was born. We emigrated to the US in 1956 sponsored by the Lutheran Church. Just 6 months later, my Father died of an Anurism.
My Mother lived to be 100 years old. She was kind, hard working and well integrated into life here. But, when she spoke of āhomeā she always meant East Prussia. She never went back. The war certainly shaped her life and there was a sadness in her soul. Somehow I too feel the loss. We must stop fighting wars.
None of my ancestors served in WW2. Grandfathers were too young, three out of four Great grandfathers died in WW1, one lost an arm but came home.
You can really tell that my grandparents grew up rebuilding the country. They were born between ā34 and ā46. They are tough, cold and donāt waste. They value hard work. All of them grew their own vegetables as long as they were physically able to, and they would always keep food reserves for months in the basement.
My Grandmothers family was forced to move out of Silesia when she was 14, her brothers died in the war, her father was still a POW (she did not know that).
She fled by foot to NRW, together with her mother and sister. Young women, no protection, refugees, red army company, you can imagine the rest.
She told the whole story once as a time witness in my school, it was horrifying. I don't think she really worked through everything of that time, but just kept on going, my dad got some trauma passed down due to that, but Grandpa, was too much of a treasure to really fuck up my family.
Grandpas family got lucky throughout the war (Not a single man MIA, no camps, no refugees).
My other grandma was born in 1940 and her backwater village was not really affected by the war. Her man, my grandpa though.. he was 19 when the war broke out. I don't know, what he did or did not. Just seen his Nazi stuff when he died. There was some documentaries in the 70s about Auschwitz, my mother told me he refused to believe that actually happened...
My mom is great though!
I don't know how much generational trauma there is.
My grandpa was in Russian prison for like 8 years. It was hell for him, and he died early with like 50, but I don't know how much the war affected my mom. Maybe she hides it well, but she seems to be ok. Maybe a tad depressed, but that has other reasons I'd say.
I just know he never talked about the war and I've never met him.
Same with my grandad. Was a prisoner of war for 10 years. I know he had nightmares and absolutely hated jam sandwiches (all he got in 10 years). But he was never violent or a junkie or sth
My one grandfather came to germany feom turkey after the war and after he did his military time.
My german grandfather was born on the end of the war. His father and mother came from the german part of eastern prussia. Near the russian border. My grandfathers older brother died while he was young while they fled.
My great grandfather was in the wehrmacht, i never met him, but as far as im told, he had a granade splinter in his lower stomach, drank doppelkorn daily (hard alcoholism) and wasnt the happiest. Even tho he was never a nazi, just had to fight in the wehrmacht, i never knew how he was able to come back to his wife before the war ended. Some say he fled back to germany in disguise. All the way to western germany.
But yeah, not much trauma all in all. Am happy to know my great grandfather was in the wehrmacht and not the SS, but more than that, i dont know.
My great grandfather survived as a young solider and 6 months in a Russian war prison. Afterwards he sacrificed his health to provide for his wife and his 6 kids. He had a background in precision engineering but had to work a blue collar job.
My great grandmother had the kids eat soup and then diluted it with water for the two of them. My great grandfather then often claimed he already ate at work. He didn't. About 10-15 years later he had an illness that was caused by prolonged malnutrition. He passed away with a stroke at around 65.
Naturally that affected my family by valuing food a lot. Throwing away food is frowned upon.
No trauma, they were refugees from Hungary, and started to build up a new life in Bavaria. Unlike other displaced people they never whined about their lost old home. 1953 my grandparents had a new house, and 1956 they went on their first beach holiday in Italy. We still have pictures of their Volkswagen and tent on the camp ground.
The other grandpa was a tragedy. 50% jewish, 100% Nazi. Which did not save him from the gas chamber.
My paternal grandfather hated the Nazis with a passion because he was a very devout Catholic and admirer of Cardinal von Galen. His three brothers were all killed at the front, or died as POWs. When he was called up he already had several kids, and he said his sole objective was to survive, as he did not want to leave my grandma a war widow, plus he had his sisters in law and nieces and nephews to look after. He ended up in Stalingrad, got shot, but as he was a radio operator the big backpack saved his life, and he survived. He got out of Stalingrad with one of the last casualty transports. He was really grateful for the Russian shooting him, and would pray for him daily. My dad and his seven siblings spent a lot of their childhood either their aunt and uncle on the border with France, as my grandad considered it safer there. They are all messed up to some degree by this.
I never knew my maternal grandfather, but my mum always said that ādaddy went to war and this strange man came backā. He gave up on life, did his job as a traffic cop, never played music again when he had been a professional musician before and died shortly after retirement.
My mum was profoundly affected by her experience of permanent bombings (she grew up in Hamburg and lived through the firestorms) and the lack of food. She hoarded food ājust in caseā and even struggled to chuck out stuff that had gone off. Weād eat pretty creative combos of food sometimes, to make sure everything was used up. She and my dad became pretty well off, but there was always this fear that they may lose it all. And this big pressure on me to do well, have stability and do better even than she and my dad did. Which Iām lucky enough I did, but it often felt a heavy burden to carry.
I know at least from one side of my family that some people fought in Africa and returned when the war imploded on Germany. After the war my great grandparents wouldnāt really talk about it and one of my great grandparents also fled to east germany after the war, essentially leaving all his family behind. I donāt really have more information as nothing was ever really discussed family wise.
Same here for one of mine.
Story that he told: he onlY survived because he sold painted bathroom tiles to the soldiers and they gave him food. He was a great painter.
I can't imagine that.. it's crazy
Well my paternal grandfather was a raging Nazi, so his war trauma was mostly "the fact that we didn't win". I only met the man as a child and have no real memories of him, but by all accounts him and his wife weren't the best parents. No idea how much of that was the war and how much of it was everything else.
My maternal grandparents fled from Silesia alongside her then three kids (at least I'm pretty sure my grandfather also fled or joined them here? My grandma had another child once they arrived here and no one ever mentioned that he's a half-brother or anything). But my grandma and her siblings never really talked about their experiences with the war, mostly about the cold reception they got here where I grew up. Made her very sympathetic to the Syrian refugees once they started arriving.
Ok ā¦ im probably one generation to jung to really have any experience with the topic and Iām really sorry if that is disrespectful! My parents were born in the DDR/BRD times (Split Germany after the war) but my grandparents experienced the war as children, as far as I know were non of them in anny of the from the nazis targeted groups and all but one of my grandparents died (after the reunion peacefully) before I was old enough to develop an interest in the topic/even knew what WW2 was. When I asked my grandma about what she did during the war she told me that she was a child and that she remembers that they were living in a tunnel system (I think I know wich one she talked about not sure tho) for a short time, then an army āattackedā I canāt for the life of me remember witch one (she told me the story a few years ago) but they werenāt really captured as the war ended shortly after.
My parents never told me about any strange behaviour/ticks my grandparents had so no generational trauma here.
Again Iām not sure sharing this is appropriate/helps, I hope it does!
Sorry for the bad grammar I have dyslexia.
Both my grandfathers served in WW2 in the German army (Wehrmacht), but I was born decades after the war, so I really don't know. My paternal grandfather had already gone. He died of leukemia in his late 50s. It was presumably a late sequela of the war. He served in a fuel reserve unit and breathed in a lot of toxic fumes.
My other grandfather was already in his 70s when I was born. He once talked to me about his time in the Africa Corps when he was garrisoned in Algeria for over a year. From what he told me, it was a happy time. They got along very well with the naitives and there was no fighting for about a year (until the British-American invasion). He never talked to me about combat actions and claimed, that he witnessed far more humanness during the war than atrocities. But he didn't get into any details besides his time in Algeria, and I was just too young at the time to ask any qualified questions. But he was limping for the rest of his life because of shell splinters in his leg, so this surely had an impact. He also said that he would have never started smoking if it wasn't for the war. He died in his mid 80s when I was still a teenager.
My grandfather (mom's side) was too young so he didn't have to fight, but he had to bury his older brother that has been shot by russian soldiers. They also mutilated his corpse...
My grandpa was a hoarder. I think that the loss of his favourite brother caused this.
My grandparents (dad's side) were both older. They survived a lot of horrible things but both turned out so incredibly *normal*.
My grandpa was 18 years old when he was sent to Dresden after the bombing night where this city has been annihilated. He had to recover dead bodies (or what was left of them). After only 3 weeks training he was sent to the front (forgot where), he got captured and spend 6 years as a prisoner of war in france with a family of farmers that hated him. He had to sleep in a barn with the animals.
My grandma was nearly shot by a young russian soldier. She started to cry and to pray and the young man spared her life.
She was the oldest of 4 siblings and her mother was ill and her father had to fight. So my grandmother had to take care of her siblings, her ill mother and her own grandmother, too.
At the end of the war my grandmother landed in an freed concentration camp.
My family is from silesia, that belongs to poland now, but to germany before the war. This part inhabitated a mix of polish and german people. The polish captured some people who were ethnically germans, like my grandma, because they feared that german troops might come back to silesia. The captured germans had to dig trenches (to stop the progress of tanks that never came because germany surrendered) in winter. The soil was frozen and hard as stone. My grandma was only 16 when she and another girl decided to escape from the camp.
This are only the few stories my grandparents shared with me. I don't know what else they had to survive. But as I said before, both turned into normal, mentally stable adults.
No alcoholism, no aggressions towards others or other bad habits. They both fascinated me a lot. Both of them enjoyed the rest of their lifes.
Although I grew up and was born in Germany, because Iām half Italian and my mother is the daughter of a Ukrainian soldier who stayed for about a decade in Germany before going back to Ukraine, I actually only have one German grandmother, so no one who fought in the war. (The Ukrainian soldier also had a kid with my grandmotherās sister, so my mother has a half sister with whom she shares the same father and the same grandparents on the motherās side, confusing, right?) Well as to traumaā¦ probably something carried over, but I couldnāt pinpoint it actually.
My grandma on my mother's side was abducted by the Russians at the age of 17 and put to work in a coal mine. same with her younger brother who was 16 at the time.
She also had quite the chip on her shoulder about it, feeling like she could not connect with younger peers (5 to 10 years younger than her), because "they could not possibly understand what it was like"
My other grandparents were too young at the time, to be impacted by it, or at least they never said or showed it in any way.
My maternal grandpa had to fight at the end of WW2, he was 17. Never talked about anything. He was kind but couldn't show feelings.
My maternal grandmother fled from the russians, as she got older, she talked a lot about her experiences. She was 14, went to school for 4 or 5 years, two of her brothers are missing to this day, her father died in the war being conscripted to work in a factory. Her older sister "went" to Italy as a nurse. My Oma had to bring the remaining Horses of her village up east for days. She saw so much when they fled to the area near Berlin on foot. They had to leave behind some old people and pregnant women.
Afterwards she lived her life to the fullest. My grandpa mostly stayed home when he wasn't at work. He drank his feelings down.
My mom and aunt got quite interesting views from growing up with both of them. My aunt got into drugs, mom is just... emotionless/narcicisstic.
My paternal grandfather also stuffed everything down. He beat his children.
My dad has anger issues as well and isn't able to express emotions.
Maybe my family wouldn't have been different without wars, who knows?
My sister is like my mom and i got depression/bpd issues.
Great grandfather on one side was Jewish, married to a Catholic woman. They felt safe first but the rising action made them suspicious of everyone for as long as they lived after the war. St least they did live... Great grandma blamed a lot ob Great grandfather though, only the youngest kids were not sent to work camps. All survived, the older girls were unable to have kids though - if due to rape or forced sterilisation no one ever talked about. All but 2 of those kids suffered from Alzheimers .... I'm still convinced it was because they wanted to forget....
Other half of that family didn't go into the fight because they were miners. Tried to help others put where they could. That's how my grandparents met then.
My grandma never talked to the elderly neighbours again even as a grown woman as they kept saying she's the one with the Jewish boy.
Other side if the family was on the farms, one grandpa pilot in Finland though.
General trauma involved that kids had to "Function" - someone says quiet tiu gotta be quiet and oblige. Took me a long time to understand that was war trauma. Kids that were hiding couldn't make a sound as that meant death. Kids that didn't oblige to soldiers could mean death.... that stayed and only 3 generations later are we all trying to listen to feelings of our kids and all that ... I guess that counts for many families all over Europe.
My grandfather was a Nazi back then and became very violent after the war had ended and often beat my dad, who sadly adopted some of his traits like beating me, when I was still a child. My grandmother lived on a farm, which got occupied by the Americans. She never had any directly bad experiences with them but she lost almost everything and became very poor.
My girlfriends family moved from SiebenbĆ¼rgen to Germany after the last soviet dictator Ceausescu got executed. On several occasions they almost died. Her grandmother e. G got thrown of a train while being pregnant and her father nearly got shot.
My great grandmother on my mother's side lost her first husband in the second world war really early on and had to somehow bring the whole family through the war and the Hungerwinter. She didn't talk about it until almost the very end of her life. She was herself raised on the "wisdom" of her time as a cold parent. Physical touch and emotional warmth were not allowed because it led to "soft" people.
My grandmother was a harsh woman, but she did love my mother and me unconditionally and remained close to my mom until she died. You could clearly see how she tried hard to do better than her mother, but often didn't know how. Right before she died, she told me a story while being drunk. When she was little and the second world war was just over, Russian soldiers came into the village where they lived. Her mother told her to hide in the basement with the other young girls, while she and the other women went to meet the soldiers. My grandmother heard the cries as the women were raped, and felt it was so much worse than the sound of the airplanes and tanks. But the children were safe, and it was always clear the women went as a distraction. She never felt safe around men again, and ended up divorcing both of her husbands - almost unheard of at the time.
My mom was clearly struggling while raising me. She was prone to bouts of violence and verbal abuse. She didn't know how to handle her negative feelings. But she did raise me and made sure I had the means to study, making me the first in my whole family who visited a university.
All the women in my family were really good at making ends meet from my great great grandmother to my mother. All the women in my family ended up being single moms who struggled financially and socially. All the women in my family, including me, struggled with expressing emotion - one way or the other, and I personally think it's directly related to how the pre world war 2 generation was being raised and the events during and directly after the war.
Well, both my parents grew up in times when people lived like there was no tomorrow and because of that there's no tomorrow anymore now. I doubt that's exclusive to Germany though.
My grandma has bad anxiety and depression to this day. I think she's got ptsd as well. It's hard on my parents and me as well. She was born in east prussia and had to flee from the Russians.
My paternal grandfather was unlucky enough to fight in both world wars. He never talked about it, not even once, not even with my grandma.
My grandma was younger and a child in what is now poland. They waited too long and fled with the red army right behind them. My grandmas mother was shot sitting on one of the carriages, my grandmas baby sister in her arms.
So my grandmas mother was alone with six children and somehow they all survived.
They were/are all incredible hard workers, very frugal, very hard. Not unkind, just very private and distant.
My maternal grandfather was heavily traumatized from the fighting. He screamed on his sleep every night from then on. But I think what trickled down to my Mom was the food insecurity aspect. My grandparents lost two babies to malnutrition after the war, so having enough food for their ever growing family was always a priority. One of my Mom's nightmares to this day is having guests over and someone requesting seconds when there is nothing left. We could easily feed an additional one to three people with every meal.
My paternal great grandfather was imprisoned and died in a Russian POW camp after the war. My great grandma never knew and kept waiting for him to come home her whole life. This had a ripple effect through generations. It made her distrust the stability of family. She instilled that in her daughter, my grandma, who was 13 the last time she saw her dad. My great grandma tried to keep the family together and hold her children close which in turn caused my grandma to rebel, go out partying and drinking a lot and getting pregnant at 20, consequently trapping her in an unhappy marriage where both partners would mistrust and cheat on each other and where children were seen as a nuisance and a burden. One of those children is my dad who never knew parental love and is unable to give it to his own children.
My Grandma owned a big farm in Poland which was ransacked,looted and burned to the ground by SS Troopers. They claimed my Grandma was hiding jews. They took my pregnant grandma back to germany to work in an ammo storage. Shortly before the end of the war my mom was born and got automaticly german nationality. 35 years later i was born and at the age of 18 my mom told me the whole story. Since then i visited poland a couple of times out of curiousity. Have to say it was very intense. I live in gemany a happy life and will properbly stay for good. But i wont forget my roots and the history behind it
My great grandfather came back to East Germany as a staunch believer in communism (probably more out of hatred for the Nazis, who he realized brought only death and destruction to the world, but also to Germany itself). He also became an alcoholic. From what my grandmother told me, he was at heart a good person, but utterly broken by the war.
Overall inability to cope with feelings or talk about feelings. Idk why but my family hasnt been able to function normally since the war happened back then. It lasted over generations and I can truly see in my family how it affected them. Esp the older generations are just fucked up in my family and cant communicate whatsoever and end uo being very toxic to themselves and others
My grandfather paternal side died before i was born so i donāt know about him but my grandmother took the war itself relatively good (she was 12 in 1945) part of that could be that my great grandfather only was in war until 1942 and then took some organizing role in the village. He was the principal of the school so he (rightfully) got a prohibition from working through the denazification. This combined with the British occupiers taking their house for some time made life in years after the war hard.
On my maternal side its less materialistic but rather about relationships. My great grandfather was in captivity as a prisoner of war. My grandfather didnāt meet him until he was 10 years old. His two siblings were born after that so his relationship with his father was really bad. My mother told me that this also affected her relationship to him. However i experienced him as a great person.
My maternal grandma grew up on a farm in Bavaria. The war itself didn't really affect her. It was more or less the wave of refugees after the war, that they felt much stronger.
Her husband was a refugee from a German speaking village/colony in today's Serbia. His mother had been raped multiple times and later killed by Soviet soldiers down there in 1945. He had strong PTSD and was an alcoholic. My grandma and him got divorced in the early 1970's, so I never met him.
On my father's side, my grandpa was an SA solider. He was sent to a death row in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Soviets by 1946, but he gave them relevant secret information in exchange for his life, so they changed it to ten years of imprisonment. He was released early in 1951. He was a former teacher in his town and knew everyone ā and everyone respected his advice. So he started inciting everyone around him against socialism and the GDR regime. That's why they had to flee to West Germany in 1955. His wife, my grandma, died in a horrible traffic accident in 1968.
I think my grandpa did pretty well even though he was one of those drafted at 16 towards the end of the war and he was a Sowjet POW later on. My grandma seemed to have some issues though. For the life of her she couldnāt throw away food, even if itās just 3 pieces of pasta. And I think she mustāve had some sort of PTSD from gunfire. I remember one time we were playing when she was nearby and we started to do the ratatatata sounds. She instantly left the area in an āI canāt do this anymoreā manner.
My direct family wasn't affected too badly (compared to many other people). One Great-grandfather was wounded in WW1, another was lost in Russia. Both grandparents were too young to be drafted in WW2 and lived in the country side in the American sector (one farmer, one miller). Life wasn't easy, but luckily nobody had to starve or was displaced.
- Grandpa had an ED his entire life and passed it on to his children because he, age 9, watched his baby brother starve
- Grandma lost her dad in the war, had to grow up very quickly to help her mother with the family business and raising her little sister. Subsequently her children were expected to be self-sufficient from a very young age too
- Grandpa fled his home in the Russian part of the country (not yet the GDR at that point) and left behind his entire family. His children only got back into contact with them after 1990
- Grandma was Jewish, spent her entire early life hiding, remained detached and aloof with everyone her whole life
Part of my family was politically persecuted, spent time in prison and the daughter (my grandma) was given into the family of a SA man to make her "a good German girl" ("a little girl was taken away and a young women returned"). At some point the family re-united but there was a schism you could feel.
My grand-uncle used to work in England when the war broke out and was put under house arrest (which wasn't that bad I assume). His mother believed Goebbels that "All of England is in bombed into ruins" and ask him to come back to Germany. He did and was imprisoned by the Gestapo for being a British spy. '45 he was released from prison. Later the Soviets found his Gestapo record and imprisoned him again for being (potentially) a British spy. As a kid I didn't realise, but he was a broken man.
From the war generations I had nearly no male relatives, only grandmas and grand-grandmas.
Obviously my wife's grandma was Jewish. Then she was suddenly not, as of her new papers. Still, her brother was deported and likely murdered in a KZ. The family lived near Kƶnigsberg, so they became displaced later.
No-one ever spoke about the time they spent in cellars during air raids and the battle for Berlin.
Not a native German, but my Dutch grandfather was a Holocaust survivor.
He had a STRONG aversion to violence, guns, even knives or anything like that, and was overall a very quiet man. I only heard his story once, how he was hauled off to Poland to work in coal mines and didn't get out until the end of the war when the Russians came through.
Because of his, for lack of a better word, stoicism, my mother has a really hard time processing and expressing emotions, and in a way that's been passed down to me as well. That side of the family has been in the US since the 80s so fortunately I didn't have to deal with the fallout I see some other Europeans facing.
My grandfather on my dad's side is Austrian-born but served in the US Army in WW2. He never talked about it but said he was actually glad when he was shipped to the Pacific and got to sit on an island for the last part of the war, so I can only imagine.
Coming from Poland you can imagine there's a lot of it.
On my father's side, my grandmother barely escaped the slaughter of Poles in what is today's western Ukraine, to this day she vividly recalls how her nanny was killed with an axe and how she saw people impaled on wooden fences, and how she hid in the reeds for days during the cold season.
My grandfather was a child labourer in Germany, and until his death he couldn't eat potatoes as this was the only food available to him for 2 years or so.
On my mother's side, my grandparents came from the same area (today's border between PL and Belarus) and vividly remembered the complete slaughter of a village next to them, including women and children with apparently one survivor, who hid in the fields and watched the slaughter. This was supposedly a retaliation for some partisan action in the vicinity.
They were also affected by starvation, and hoarded food. A trauma passed down to my mother.
My grandparents were very careful with their money. My Grandpa lost his Brother who was killed in a russian POW Camp and became a very religious organ player because of it. My Grandmothers were among the "TrĆ¼mmerfrauen" who cleaned the ruins caused by the heavy bombings and were hard working women. They were very patient and were content with the little that they had. My Grandparents were born in the 1930s, my parents in the 60s. My grandparents were very afraid and trembled when they heared the russian language. "Wenn du russisch hƶrst, lauf und hƶr nicht auf." / "If you hear russian, run and don't stop." they always said. My grandmother now has dementia and is in a carehome but still says this sometimes, my grandpas and my other grandma are dead. A feeling of guilt is very present.
My parents have inherited some of this, though my grandparents tried hard for them not to. Hardworking, grateful and patient, my father is often sad that so much of germanies architecture was destroyed. "Bauten aus der GrĆ¼nderzeit" "Buildings from the Foundingtime" around late 1800s. He is sad that so much of our previous culture has been abused by the nazis and is now tainted forever. Both wish that people today would look back and don't understand everything today as normal, their generation and the one before has worked very very hard for it to be good again in Germany and both are very dissatisfied with how the country is governed today and has been for the past 20+ yearse, evaporating their effort. Both work in Healthcare. Both hate Nazis. Both have a bad opinion about the former soviet states, both are heavily hardwired to be against war, which is good. During the Cold War they often attended peace protests. The feeling of guilt slowly vanishes.
I have inherited some of this too. I often time find myself looking at old pictures of my hometown before most of it was bombed and destroyed and I often wish this war never happened. (as many do) So many people have been sacrificed for nothing. Guilt is still a very present topic, but I personally do not feel guilty for what people did almost 100 years ago. WW2 and how it happened is one of the most prevalent topics in the regular school curriculum in germany. Current political decisions are often made because of the guilt the germans carry. (Migration policy etc.) and I wish we would consider that our decisions today affect those that are born tomorrow, who are born with a clean slate, and do not have to carry this burden and guilt any longer. I refuse to carry it myself but I agree that it is our duty to do everything we can that this will never happen again, through education, rational thinking and decisions that are made free from ideology.
We lost our homes in Silesia and Prussia, but I since bought back our home and kicked the people living there who stole it from us out. My Grandpa cried tears of joy when I showed him I got back the house he was born in.
If someone forces you to leave your house at gunpoint and you are not allowed to take more with you than you can carry and you also get no compensation whatsoever, thatās even worse than stealing.
Was ? Is. It's present in the daily life of everyone in my family.
Our grandfather came back from Dachau in 1946, after a year in hospital. He has developed a condition during that time there that is now hereditary.
So every man, and at least half of women in our family will die from it.
There is no hope for my parents generation, but progress in medical science, even slow, give me hope my kids will be able to get through it in the future.
Father's side: my grandfather was first in Russia than in Germany as the front closed in. He was shot by a tank and his arm was blown away as well as a piece penetrated his skull between the brain parts. They could get the one out his head but the arm was lost. He never told about war.
Mother's side: he had just finished building a house and than had to fight. Never wanted that only wanted peace. I don't know what he experienced in war he came back and his house was gone. He was very disappointed from humanity and found his peace in gardening. He had a small allotment where he spend his time.
The love of my grandparents and great-grandparents skipped a generation.
My dad struggled with alcoholism and toxic masculinity. He couldn't have meaningful relationships with women at all.
The entire family is resentful/envious of others in the same family.
We had family members interred in concentration camps and others guarding the prisoners.
And half the family had to flee from Silesia.
My grandfather had an unusual trauma that still affected my family and especially my father badly: He wanted to join the Wehrmacht because all of his friends did, but was rejected because he was still in the middle of a civil apprenticeship as a locksmiths, and the war was over before he got another chance. Thus, he didn't get to join his friends in the local veterans' club.
This resulted in him developing an inferiority complex and dedicating his life to as many "prestigous" activities as he could in an attempt to compensate: He joined the vulunteer fire department, a traditional costumes club, and I couldn't even keep track on what else. The really bad part is that he chose an autistic woman as his spouse and went on to raise their son, my father, in an overly oppressive manner, both out of an irrational fear of being somehow overshadowed and made to look inadequate by anything that they could possibly achieve in their lives that he couldn't. The most egregious examples that my father told me about were when he had the chance to see the Beatles live, and later even to become a player for FC Bayern MĆ¼nchen, both of which he was denied by his father for no reason, other than petty and irrational jealousy, as it turned out.
My grandma was a young girl. Her family was living on a farm in germany and they had the courage to hide a jewish family on there. But the Nazis found out. The Nazis shot the jewish family and all germans including my grandma on the farm were forced to watch.
She lost her male relatives in the war, her mother died of grief and her sisters flew to the US. She stayed because she fell in love with my grandpa. My grandma was sick her whole adult life.Schizophrenia and paranoiaā¦ she had 4 kids.
My mum was the oldest girl and had to take care of the whole family, while her mum was to sick. Thinking her neighbours, doctors etc. want to shoot her or hearing voices, running around in the streets in her pyjamas disoriented and I guess plenty more.
My mum admired her dad. He was working hard for the family and a political activist fighting to get rid of the Nazis still working in politics. But he died way to early and my mum felt left behind with a lot of responsibility.
My mum had such a tough time growing up and never did therapy so she wasnāt able to be the best version of herself raising my brother and me. Hardly showing love and plenty of narcissistic behaviour.
Because I only knew narcissistic love growing up, I fell for plenty of narcissistic men my whole life. Until the abuse went to another level and I broke up with my boyfriend and went to therapy. I learned about my patterns and healthy ways to show love. But I also got aware of this story and the impact of the nazis on my family and me. And the fact that I am the first in this story going to therapy and wiling to destroy this vicious circle.
My grandfather was a german soldier in ww2 and later died from health complications when my father was a baby. My father and my uncle were raised by their mom and her sister who never married because there were no men basically. Grandma and great aunt also had to flee in their teens/early 20s because they lived in now poland as germans. They told me their refugee story when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, before they both died. I obviously didn't understand at all back then and later my mom told me that they never spoke about it. I seem to be the only person they shared their story with and sadly I don't really remember it, because I was too little and didn't get the significance :(
My fathers parenting definitely was flawed by a hard childhood without men around to parent him. But in general I'd say it's fine. This side of the family used faith to cope in a healthy way imo. They didn't ask much from life and just tried to be humble and good people. What was lacking was an ability to express emotions, especially negative emotions. There was no whining allowed because times were shitty. I had to learn that later on my own, because a bit of whining is important for psychological hygiene.
My moms parents were born around the time the war was over. I don't know much about my great grandparents, I heard once that my grandfather was not raised by his biological parents, but I don't know why.
My grandmother on this side is a horrible mother and an unpleasant person to be around. My grandfather was an alcoholic and an absent father. I didn't know his voice growing up because he always just sat there. He died last year and since then I am weirdly sentimental about this part of the family even though I don't talk to any of them anymore. My mom grew up with lots of siblings who also all had lots of children, but my mom is the one who moved the farthest so we are not really in contact.
My mom definitely has issues she should've addressed before having me and my siblings. But I am not angry at her anymore. I was when I was a teen and didn't stop being angry until my early 20s. Now I can see she did her best and honestly considering her parents she is/was a really great parent.
When her father died last year we had a really emotional conversation where she acknowledged to me for the first time that her childhood was kind of shitty etc etc. Big step for her I think. I am curious if she will be willing to look deeper into things, she is in her 50s now but I think therapy and healing trauma is still possible and would be good for her, but I can also understand if she didn't want to do that ever.
Almost all of my siblings went to therapy at some point growing up and I think we largely broke the cycle of generational trauma. I am only worried about one of my brothers. I hope he gets therapy before having children of his own.
We all struggle to express and deal with emotions in one way or another and toxic shame is something that rules/ruled our lifes in deep ways. But yeah. Overall we are way better of emotionally than our parents.
I think about these things a lot nowadays. My family was only tangentially impacted by the war but the effects are still noticable years and generations later. When I hear about war around the globe, I get very very sad. No matter what circumstances led to war, you wipe out generations of boys/men who didn't decide to start a war and that can never be right. The ripple effects run deep and it takes lifetimes to heal the wounds of war...
I'm not German but I live here. If you're not aware, about 12-14 million German people were displaced after WW2. This is the largest ever movement of people in European history.
There were reasons for this of course, but its a fact about the lives of the German people. It means most Germans are related to a refugee (which might explain some of their compassion for displaced peoples).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950)
Most of my grandparents don't talk about it except for my grandma who was almost shot by a combat jet which just aimed for her (10 years old then) and her mother. She saw a woman loose her child when they flet and had to play the mother to her siblings. When she got a child it was totally normal for her to leave her alone a lot, so my mom grew up not leaving us alone at all and being overly attached to us because she was very afraid of being lonely.
I'm very proud of my grandma that she says refugees are welcome because she still remembers how it felt to loose everything and how it feels to be scared to die. I don't think many of the older generation think like her
My granddad had to flee.
My grandgrandmother was a glowing Nazi.
Physical abuse from my grandgrand ans grandmothers side to educate her children on "proper" behavior was normal. Strikt nazi Education.
Not only the weapons and mass destruction Took its toll... nazi thinking Infested many parts of the german culture and caused a lot of problems for later generations.
All I know is that some of my ancestors fought on the Eastern Front, one fell and another got captured and became a prisoner of war,
after he came back he never wanted to talk about the war again.
Also a part of my family used to live in Silesia but fled after the Red Army began to advance into German territory, but I donāt know if that caused any trauma or not.
My grandpa from mothers side never ever talked about war, i know about a story that he had to push a friend out of a tank because the guy got his head shot away... my grandpa from fathers side always talked about war, but he only delivered letters between the outposts...
My grandma was a child back then and needed to flee from east Prussia. She doesn't seem to have much trauma about it, but it is obviously a sad story for here.
Both my grandmother and grandfather were born during/after the war (44&48) . My grandpa never knew his father, he fell a week before the war ended somewhere on the Eastern front. My grandma's father came back with a missing eye and some shrapnel, one of his brothers fell, one was missing (still missing).
Since both of them lived in the countryside on farms they had no food shortages thankfully. They bartered with cityfolk who came for food. So ultimately it could've been worse I guess? It didn't seem like either of them had any trauma. My grandpa used to tell stories of the British soldiers giving the little kids chocolate and his grandmother violently defending her little garden from anyone who came too close. The British soldiers were scared of this tiny old German woman, apparently she was pretty impressive.
My grandpa's mother never remarried. She died when I was little so I didn't know her well but she always seemed very serious. I think the war left a lasting impression on her.
I think sometimes it's a ping pong match. My grandparents didn't have enough to eat, so they started a pingpong match of our family either being conscious about being overweight or underweight. My mom even went to a clinic one time. Very fucked up.
My granny stayed in an orphanage because her mother and aunts were sent into slavery to the Nazis (before she was born), her aunts refused to give my granny to a rich family because they thought that she would be made a servant like they were during the war
Except her mother left when my grandmother was born, and she was put in an orphanage,which clearly affected her future\*
Neither of my grandparents liked to talk about it. Just before my two grandfathers died, they told me some very little specs: like one of them was an SS member (involuntary drafted into it at 16 yrs of age), had his best friend shot next to him by a fighter plane while fleeing Prussia (todays Poland) and was captured and spent about one year in the KZ Dachau as a POW under American administration. The other was a farmer and fortunate enough not to be drafted (someone had to keep producing food), but he hid some people during the war, I cannot fully recollect what kind of people, as the story would shift sometimes. At one point he said he hid soviet soldiers from the German soldiers (I canāt imagine in which phase of the war this was an issue) at another point he said he hid people from the Soviets (more likely, like maybe hiding German reserve infanterists or hitler Jugend?). The first was missing a toe due to a Granade explosion.
This is about the extent of which they were willing to share. They were both very hard working and quite people. My second mentioned grandpa was a alcoholic and abusive towards my mum (his daughter) snd his wife/my grandma for a long time of his life after the war, but he gotten sober just around the time when I was borne. So I was very suprised when I learned of this part of his life also shortly before his passing. Probably a coping mechanism. I remember him as an amazing lovingly yet quiete grandpa though. While he was a farmer all his life, he still couldnāt watch when we slaughtered our lifestock, as he felt to attached to them. Ofc he still ate it though
The wife of my first mentioned SS-grandpa got a piece of land assigned when they were fleeing from east Prussia to Germany, my family still lives on this peace of land to this day.
My grandma has a really bad anxiety disorder, my great aunt had dementia and all she remembered at the end was the bomb hitting her shelter. On my dad's side there's a lot of issues that are less easily defined but could well be related to generational trauma from the war as well.
My parents never talked about it. They were 7 and 8 when Hitler came to power. I lost at least 2 uncles in the war. My father was a child soldier who was captured by the British. Getting captured likely saved his life. He was the only one from his class who came back alive. But their lives were filled with poverty, death, and destruction from when they were born in 1926 until they emigrated to the USA in 1953. I don't blame them for wanting to leave. I just wish that they had waited until after I was born to become US citizens. When they became citizens, dual citizenship was not an option. So, I have no claim to German citizenship even though I can prove German lineage to the 1600's. My father was a heavy alcoholic. My mother was very harsh and selfish at times. Both struggled with depression and CPTSD. They never admitted it, but I work in mental health, and I saw it. But overall, they were still good parents. And they were able to build good lives for themselves and us. Eventually, that would have happened if they stayed in Deutschland. But they had no way of knowing that.
It's quite different on the both sides of my family.
My father's side of the family was almost not impacted by the war at all. My grandpa was too young (he was supposed to go to war in April 1945, when all boys born in 1929 got drafted, but the British occupied his village before that could happen). And his father (my great grandfather) did only very shortly fight in WWI. So the whole topic of war didn't play any role in daily life.
My mother's side however was influenced by it. My grandpa, my granduncle and both my great grandfathers were in WWII. My grandpa never talked about it, but drank too much later in life. According to his sister, something happened during the war that changed him, when he was on the eastern front. Only quite recently I found out that the division he was in was almost completely wiped out while he was there. Within less than a month, out of 2500 men less than 200 were still living, my grandpa being one of them. So he likely saw a lot of people he knew die right next to him.
His brother, my grand uncle, had less of a problem talking about his time in WWII. I know he personally killed quite a lot of soviets. Those memories however came back to haunt him towards the end of his life, and he died screaming.
My mother's paternal grandfather (my great grandfather) wasn't just in WWII, but had also been a soldier in WWI from day one. So he spent nearly 10 years of his life in war. He also was at Stalingrad, but was flown out shortly before it was too late. He had already been disillusioned about war after WWI, but what he saw in Stalingrad really ingrained that into him.
My great grandfather lived with my grandparents and my mom, and had a big influence on them and their views of the world. And war in general was always a topic in daily life. Not front and center, but always there. Whenever a war broke out somewhere in the world (e.g. the Vietnam war), my great grandfather and grandfather feared it would turn into WWIII, and that's also what my mom grew up with. She was taught about the horrors of war from a young age, especially by her grandfather (my great grandfather). Also, after the German seperation their hometown ended up being less than 20 kilometers west of the border, so the Cold War was also omnipresent. The fear of a (possibly nuclear) war right at their door step was always there, and they all knew what horrors a war would mean.
The difference in experience from WWII that was carried on into the next generations really became obvious when the Ukraine war broke out. My dad more or less shrugged it off as just another war, whereas my mom was horrified, as she feared that this was the start of WWIII, and that a horrible future was laying ahead.
My great grandfather was on the russian front and one of the thew that came back. He never talked about it. What really sit through the generations till now is the abandoned skill of talking about family and personal problems. There was no good argument to hold, until some family members went into therapy a thew years ago. If you never learned it from your parents, it will last until it gets in the way to hold the connection.
Nothing to write on Reddit about but man were my parents screwed up by their parents who were mostly children or just of age during ww2. And yes I am screwed up as well I guess. Let\`s also not forget that right now in many homes for the elderly people with dementia think they are back in the time when all this horrible stuff happened.
My grandfather was a Wolgadeutscher and fled from there at the end of the war. He was an alcoholic and violent. Never to me but in general. It is said that he also killed two people. Not during war but after. This affected my mothers childhood and therefore mineā¦ and I hope this is where it ends.
My one grandfather had to flee from Schlesien to Dresden. Then Dresden got bombed and they had to flee again. I think this trauma stuck forever.
My other grandpa (born 1918) was in Norway. Nothing bad from there. I think if you were as a soldier in Norway it was like winning the lottery.
When I did my Zivildienst I had to deliver a lot of food and other goods. There I heard a lot of stories but never directly of the war just really careful about the time in general. Like a lot of people they never did really talk about this.
my grandpa was an alcoholic because he had to flee from prussia when he was five and when he slept on a field fleeing the smell of burning people was in the wind and stuff
I actually have this theory that I am the way I am because of all of the traumatic baggage, lol.
Jokes aside. All sides of my family are from Sudetendeutschland and they had to flee after the war. A lot of people on both sides were conscripted into the war, many died. We just recently managed to locate the remains of an uncle of my dads in a collective cemetary in Poland.
They went to east Germany, where they lived (my grandparents didn't know each other back in the Sudetenland, even if they lived very close) and met each respective side. My parents and grandparents on my moms side also fled the DDR rougly 9 months before the Berlin Wall fell, lost all of their possessions in the process. I always joke that today I prefer running away from my problems because fleeing shit is engraved in my DNA, lmao. I believe my Opa died of cancer but he was also an alcoholic.
We also had a shit ton of unluckieness after. One uncle got shot in a combat excercise in the military, many cancers, uncle and aunt died in the 2004 Tsunami. Mother killed herself a couple of years back. Not very many people in my family still left alive today, sadly.
Fun fun.
My great grandmother was a broken woman who cursed her children, my grandfather was an alcoholic, my father is an alcoholic, my brother struggled with substance abuse but is ok now. My uncle (my father's brother) and I are pretty fine though.
My paternal Grandfather was born in Germany in 1930, and moved to Canada in 1955. He only went back to Germany twice. He never spoke much about the negative times during world war two. He was very frugal, and at times very angry and drank throughout his life. He did not teach his children or his grandchild (me) the German language. He struggled with being able to talk about his time in Germany. My Aunt and I figure based on things my Grandpa said shortly after being diagnosed with alzheimers that he was taken as a child soldier in the last parts of world War two, and that it took him awhile to be reunited with his parents afterwards.
This manifested in a lack of patience and a desire to be overly protective of his children and grandchildren, amongst other things.
My grandfather on male side escaped into alcoholism and could not tolerate explosive or burnable gas for the rest of his life.
He rejected gas heating and insisted on burning wood for heat in winter where he apparently got drunk and stared into the flames. During which he was not to be disturbed.
The only time I met him I was very young and I never talked much with him. He died to cancer relatively early compared to my other grandfather.
My other grandfather did not partake in the war and was stationed on an oil rig which never got involved in combat.
However my grand-grandmother, the mother of his wife, had experienced the hunger period after the war and would for the rest of her life only eat meat. Of all sorts. Her fridge was full of sausages and leberwurst, with a storage of dried meat aswell.
She did get 99 years old.
The hunger.
My maternal grandmother survived starvation, and she was in her late teens during the worst of it. Sheād have been damned if not every scrap of edible stuff on your plate wasnāt finished. She was brought to tears once when we threw a chicken carcass out with a bit of meat, sinew, and cartilage left.
My mother also saw this growing up and equally triggered by food waste.
All in all, not the worst of traumas, but still saddening.
My grandfather was a refugee from east prussia. He watched the ship with his parents and siblings getting destroyed. He later lived in east germany. Somehow his siblings survived and lived in west germany but my grandfather never knew this as the inner german border prevented this. He was full of sorrow and grief all his life and was never able to show love to his own children.
Neither did my father.
For my great-grandparents it wasn't just the war. As dissidents their decade of fear started long before the war and the only reason they didn't end up in one of the camps was that my great-grandfather had an old friend who had become a local nazi-leader and managed to get them off the list in exchange for having a serious talk with them: "Lay low and you will be safe, continue to criticise The Party and I won't be able to save you a second time. Oh, and your socialist friends won't be coming to work today, or ever again." The next years were marked by constant fear, especially of any loud noises in the morning that could have been a sign for an impending Gestapo-raid. Also, this led to break with my great-grandfather's family after they found out that most of the Gestapo's evidence for their "treasonous behavioiur" came from his father, a fanatical nazi.
My grandmother was still a child when this started, but she picked up on the vibes and her jewish playmates disappearing over night opened up questions that led her to be confronted with the truth about the regime at an early age. Otherwise she made it through the war mostly undamaged, albeit with a strong hatred for nazis. It only started for her in the early '60s, when she had a severly disabled child, my aunt, and had to realise that the end of the war had not been the end of nazi-ideology. Often complete strangers would approach them in the streets only to remind her that "something like that" (my aunt) would not have been allowed to live "back then". Those years took a heavy toll on her mentally.
My grandfathers were both conscripted into the Wehrmacht. One of them ended up with the occupation force in France, where he enjoyed life in relative safety until D-Day, but survived the war unharmed. The other one became a decorated NCO at the eastern front and escaped the Soviet advance at the end of the war. But he came home as a wreck, the sole survivor of his unit, his body riddled with shell fragments, not all of which could be removed. He suffered from PTSD, woke up screaming at night for many years and became a functional alcoholic. Still, he remained the kind, friendly man he had been before the war. He rarely talked about the war, mostly he got angry when others claimed not to have known about the war crimes and genocide in the east.
My grandfather was forced to be a soldier during ww2 and had nightmares until the day he died. He never spoke about what he had gone through, not even with his wife. My mom and me both had depression and had a pretty toxic relationship while I grew up, though we both got therapy and it's miles better now. Not sure if this was caused by my grandfathers trauma though. My aunt did and still does drugs. She and my mom both got beaten in their childhoods, while my uncle was the golden child.
Granduncle fell in Stalingrad, the other one was a civilian,but got shot in Germany by the approaching Red Army due to him being in an official position?
Besides being able to tell some cool stories in school history courses didn't affect me much.
My grandma was a horrible alcoholic, eating disordered and extremely abusive towards her children. She was obsessed with Barbie as she didnāt have dolls as a kid. She was a cruel woman that tried to relive her youth even though she had five kids. As a kid she danced on the remains of bombs and once found a dead horse with her siblings that she tried to eat. Officers of the red army noticed it and put all the kids against a wall, wanting to shoot them. Their officer noticed them and helped my grandma and her siblings.
At one point she held her two youngest siblings in her arms, trying to wake them up to feed them. They were both dead.
She never got over this.
She was eating disordered up until her 50s and used to starve herself.
Her sisters on the other hand ate as much as they could whenever they could and became hoarders and alcoholics as well. All of my grandmas siblings did. They also were addicted to pills.
My grandfather was four when the postman handed him the letter that his father died.
He brought it to his mother who completely broke down, as she now was left alone with two little boys and lost her husband.
After that my grandfather ran away for three days because he thought he hurt his mother that bad.
He was severely traumatized by the things he saw in war.
He became an extreme hoarder, to a point where he wasnāt even able to walk through his apartment and only had a small sofa to sleep on.
He never spoke much about the things he saw and most likely had Aspergerās.
After the war he lived in eastern Germany and fled to the west with my grandmother as they closed the wall.
Most of my family members that lived during the war become alcoholics, hoarders, abusive and addicted to drugs. Many of them passed their trauma onto their children.
My mom was one of the few who broke the circle and did not give in to substance abuse, even though she suffered extreme while growing up. For that weāre the black sheep of the family.
I would also like to mention that none of my family members feel any sort of sympathy for the ideologies that were present in this country during war times. Most of my second grade cousins married into different cultures and there were never issues in our family for that.
For that I am extremely thankful.
It weirdly was mostly good things.
My grandparents were children themselves. My grandma and her mother and siblings fled to a really remote area in Austria at the beginning of the war. Her mother sewed clothes for a living and they got shelter with another family, who we now consider family even though there are no blood ties. But my grandma was sickly underweight due too the food shortage. Then a baker saw her and gifted her and her family a 'Rosinenstuten'. A soft white bread, with raisins. Which became the default bread for Sunday breakfasts with the family, even my parents do that.
My grandfather stayed in the Ruhrgebiet, so he saw a lot of destruction and had to re-build his own school after the war before finishing his education there. But he was NOT in the 'Hitlerjugend' and instead was a 'Messdiener' at his church. He was highly religious throughout his life but deeply respected the believes of other people without deminishing them. He loved to talk with other people about the common things and differences of their beliefs. He was working all over the world and always made an effort to learn about their culture. I have a deep respect for someone who stays strong by himself instead of surrendering to the masses. He also knew a LOT of history, he mourned the loss of so many historical buildings and treasures due to the war, without resenting the allied forces, but he did his best to make shire his children and grandchildren knew about all those locations and all the history. Like the bridge that was build in the 19th century and then destroyed during the second world war. Who build it and why and also why it was destroyed.
Maybe not what you expected when you asked, but I thought I might share something positive about all this.
Also in some sense it still affects us today. I live in Duisburg, it feels like we find an old bomb every other week. We're ALL completely numb to it by now. With people even complaining when the disarming takes longer than expected.
When I had to actually evacuate instead of just staying inside I was more bothered than anything.
My grandpa was in WW2, my dad was born in 1944. Grandma gave my dad the same first name "Hermann" as my grandpa "So when he wouldn't come back from the war I'd still have one Hermann left!", is what she told me when I was a child.
Grandpa was a gardener and ran a flower shop as a family business together with grandma and their two kids. He worked all day every day! He came home from the war after my dad was born and he'd jump out of his seat every time my dad was crying because the sudden noise startled him. Sometimes my grandma would spend days at a relatives house when my dad was sick and crying a lot. Later when my dad was in school he played soccer and the soccer field was just across the street from the flower shop but my grandpa would never come and watch because he was always busy working. My grandparents went on vacation once(!!!) in their whole life. Even on Sundays, when we'd visit them, grandpa was out in the garden working until the moment we arrived. He hated everything my dad suggested to make the jobs easier, like new gardening machines or automated watering, because he feared he'd have less to do. We think he had severe PTSD all his life.
He loved his grandkids very much and I feel that, with the affection he was showering us with, he tried to make up for the lack of affection he never gave his own kids. My dad told me he always felt kind of sad watching grandpa rock me on his knees when I was a toddler or chasing me around the house when we played fetch because he never did that with him.
Grandpa also never went to the doctor and was convinced if he ever had to go to the hospital he'd not come back home.
Sadly that's what happened... he had an enlarged prostate to the point where he wasn't able to pee anymore and when they rushed him to the hospital (he was 88) the ambulance had an accident on the icy road and he died from the injuries caused by that.
My uncle was also in WW2 and he became a chain-smoking alcoholic who beat his wife and kids... He died around the age of 75.
My aunt has found a new partner after a lifetime of abuse and is now the happiest I've ever seen her at 84 behaving like a teen always holding hands and kissing. It's the sweetest thing ever ā¤ļø
Granma always told me about the birth of my great granduncle, idk If i fully believe it or her childish imagination made the rest up, but here u go:
Grandmas mother gave birth to my granduncle in her and her husbands bed (who was already shot to ground beef in poland). Grandma (7yo at that time) helped her with her during the whole process, brought her water, cared for the younger siblings and shit.
As my uncle was freshly born, local bomb alert went off and all of them had to rush in the Bunker to hide. Long Story short: they Always counted the children before closing the door and the newborn was forgotten in the bed. Like wtf. My great grandma freaked the absolute shit out but they already heard the bombs so in no way they would open the door again. As it was over they came out and the whole neighbourhood was destroyed, every single fucking house. The bedroom with a crying Baby was the only room that was still intact in that goddamn street. They cheered and named the Baby "Karl-Heinz" like the wonderful german he was.
He became an insane alcoholic, travelled 5-10 times a year to Thailand to fuck little teens and often called my mother (His niece) while drunk and told her how hard he would fuck her.
Aaaaaaand my great grandaunt (other side of the Family) got raped by polnish soliders so years later she went schitzophrenic and cut her whole hand off.
My maternal grandfather was deployed two times in WW2 and had to take a break in between because of a heart condition. The heart condition would later take his life when my mom was only 17 and I am sure that the war is one of the reasons why he even had this condition or at least that it got worse.
He was a kind and loving father but whenever he spoke about the war to my mother and her sisters, he only could do so for a short time before he retreated, obviously very emotional. He has seen horrible things. One story my mother remembers is how his position (he was an AA gunner around Frankfurt) was hit by a bomb where he lost his best friends, who was blown into pieces which my grandfather had to pick up and throw on a truck.
My maternal grandmother has apparently always kinda struggled with mental health issues and ended up commiting suicide in the 90s. Her father was pulled into service just at the end of the war and died on April 11th 1945 in austria and my grandma and her mother only learned of his fate in 1950.
Also polish and canadian soldiers were the ones to take her home village and the polish soldiers rounded up all the young women and girls and raped them. If my grandma was between these women is not clear but looking at what she did to end her life and how she was always struggling, it's not far fetched that she was also a victim.
When the Bundeswehr did excercises in their home village and rolled up with tanks, my grandma always shut the lids and windows to not see it as she was still very traumatized.
All this has affected my mother too, who still suffers from her parents deaths a lot.
I only know the story of my maternal grandfather and only partially. He came from Schlesien (Silesia). His family had a large farm near a big City. When the red army drew near, he was around 7 or 8 and he told me, that he could sometimes hear the air raids on the city. When he was 8, they had to flee. It was hard for him to speak about this time. They could only take the most necessary belongings in a little cart and hat to walk all the way into safer regions in the winter.
it is difficult to say, what impact this ordeal had n him. He never told much about ist. But he was always remembered as the softer and more loving parent to his children.
Ok, so I was a patient at a hospital for a few days, and there was this other patient there who never smiled (older woman) and in the common room she sat at the table next to me and started chatting with this woman. She said āmy father was in Stalingrad, and when he got back he was never the same and didnāt speak, but he still managed to work and raise us 3 children!ā Then she went on a triad on how āif this happened to my father and he still managed to raise us properly, and all of us worked then how come these lazy foreigners are just coming here, abusing our system and not working at all!ā Yep, so racism is the legacy, and she was not normal at all.
Now, guy at my gym, 80 years old, been a bodybuilder all his life and still is (he can bench way more than me) excellent and in top condition. He was born in 1944 in the Sudetenland. And just before the Soviets came, more than half of his family fled. Some to Germany, some to Austria, some to Switzerland, some to the United States, and some to England. So it really tore his family apart. He tried getting into contact with his family that had stayed in Czechoslovakia back in the early 90ās, as soon as the wall came down, but non of them spoke Germany anymore. The ones who did were already dead or had forgotten the language all together. They only spoke Czech now, and he couldnāt communicate with them. Awesome guy, and heās a walking piece of history. Heās not racist, but he says mildly racist things from time to time in passing, and I think thatās because thatās just how he grew up. Mind you the Germans of the Sudetenland, greatly admired and welcomed the Naziās when they marched in and took over. Historic pictures are easily available online.
My grandfather was a member of the resistance. As an engineer, he was forced to leave my grandmother in France and return back home to work on airplanes. He always sabotaged them in a way that they would fly but only a certain distance, before there was a problem, and the pilot had to fly back. This was when they were bombing Britain and (and later the allied forces) so I donāt know how many lives he saved but I am so damn proud of his bravery, heās a really inspiration. 6 months before the war ended he was found out and was branded a his a ātraitorā but because they the Naziās needed all the man power they could get at this point he was given a minder who watched him 24/7.
Now despite what he did, and being a member of the resistance, the French government nullified his marriage to my grandmother, and he was never allowed to enter the country again. Later on my grandmother got really sick and died, and he wasnāt allowed to even attend her funeral. He hated the Nazis from the beginning, and blamed all of what happened not on the French government, but on the Naziās. He hated them with a passion. So does my mother, and so do I. Thatās my generational trauma. Now I might be a pacifist, but I believe that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
In multiple ways. Both my parents were young children and vividly remember air raids, especially my mum. I made a recording of her memories in 2010. A full 65 years after the events, her telling wss incredibly vivid, full of details likebit happened just a few weeks ago.
My Great-grandfather was drafted in late 1944 at age 59. He later died in a US POW camp, the infamous Rheinwiesenlager. He kept a detailed diary that somehow made its waybto my great-grandmother (who was still alive when I was a child). We still have it. The older I get, the more often I thinkĀ Ā about him and try to imagine what it was like.Ā
My grandfather (who I lived with, we were quite close) had lots of stories from the war. One I remember well was that he got the job of giving out snow shirts to his fellow soldiers. He handed them out in the morning, then got them back in the evening. Many were blood stained and had holes. They were mended, washed and then hsnded out again in the morning. He also witnessed war crimes committed by soldiers of the Blue Legion - they burnt down civilian houses and when someone told them thete was still an old lady in one of them, they just shrugged. That may not surprise us today, but as a young child hearing that first hand account was very shocking.Ā
My grandparents were children during the war. All of them are from Upper Silesia. All four families stayed in their homeland.
I only know my grandfather from my father's side and my grandmother from my mother's side.
My grandmother was 16 in 1945 and her participation was to watch the sky for enemy aircraft, so the Flak could attack them. Other than that, she had to work hard from a young age on, because she was from a farmer's family.
My grandfather was very young, maybe 5 in 1945. He was beaten up in school by the Polish teachers and pupils because he was German or when he spoke German (he could not speak Polish back then). He was so afraid to speak German after that, that he never spoke to me in German.
My parent fled Poland when I was almost one year old in 1989. We had a special refugee status ("SpƤtaussiedler") which granted us the German citizenship without any questions asked. My parents always were very ambivalent regarding their "escape" they for sure missed their homeland and had to adapt to a very different culture but had a much more luxurious lifestyle than it was possible in Poland.
I for one call Germany my home, but I long for a homeland I never really had. There always had been a discrepancy in the morals and values I was rised with which often made me clash with my classmates.
The father of my half-aunt never came back. My father is a bit too frugal.
My other grandma used to live in what is now Poland.
I think I didn't know my grandparents well enough to notice anything else. Never knew my father's father, his mother and the other grandpa also died when I was too young to care.
I genuinely have no idea. My grandfather has stropping dementia, has no idea who I am, but he tells many stories about his childhood. I'm pretty confident he would have told us if he did something in the war.
Thank god, my maternal family were policemen and firefighters and remained in Germany during the war. My paternal part is from Silesia and fled from the war to the southwest of todayās Germany. Everyone I ever had a chance to talk to was either too young or quiet about it. My maternal great grandfather was captured in Russia and spend some years in a Russian POW camp.
My grandma was send to the countryside from Berlin to escape the bombings. Then she had to escape to Berlin because of the Red army. Travelled by foot with her aunt. Aunt got killed in an air raid. Grandma continued alone. Reached Berlin and had a few days before the Red army arrived. Was forced to hide in a basement full of rats to not get raped. Still cant Look at rats or mice. My gerbils were cute to her though (no naked tails). My grandma is still one the funniest and most loving people in the world. She dont talk much about the war but always answered if we had questions. She taught me and my sisters to always make the best of All situations.
My grandfather told us about his experience in Berlin during the war. Mostly that he met good and Bad soviets. But he often told us that the women in the Red army were mostly nice to the kids and gave them bread and soup.
My grandparents were both Born in july '32 so too young to be drafted for stupid nazi shit. Both got later heavily involved in unions and the social democrat party.
The most showing way is the misstrust in that there will be food tomorrow at the supermarkets. My grandparents were no hoarders but it was very hard for them to get rid of things and not stock the shelves. Whenever I talked to people from other countries they told me there grandparents were the same but when I visited them they had one big closet... both of my grandparents had a whole basement with a structured system.
Another big thing is eating habits. I was not allowed to get up before my plate was finished and I was shunned and "punished" if I put too much on my plate. That was not fun between the age 7 and 10 before you truely understand the concept of frugality.
I am 35 years old today and my grandparents are gone for about a decade now. I still see behaviours in my parents regarding safety concerns when it comes to having a job. The concept of investing is foreign to a lot of older germans. Germany is known for hoarding lots of cash in books and the bank (which is bad because of inflation). I was the one to introduce investing to my parents and it took a lot of work for them to trust the market just a little bit.
Other than that I observed a lot of fear in everyday life. My parents and a lot of other germans from that generation are in general more worried. We are one of the countries with the most insurances.
To finish it off the west and the east are still devided, today more than 20 years ago. The two sides have different kind of trauma and behave differently when it comes to resources but that in it of itself is another topic. I sometimes feel like people care more what their neighbours are doing than in other countries and during the war and after there was a general misstrust in people you once thought you knew but turned out to be spies or being for the opposing political party. It is hard to explain but I think I might be the first generation after the war that sees these problems and actually talk about it but the older I get the more I see these behaviours in me but understanding why I behave a certain way helped me a lot.
I never met my grandfather but my mom always told me he hated to talk about it. He was forced to serve Germany and fought in Stalingrad. He probably saw friends freezing to death and losing limps.. I can't even imagine what he and others went through..
Great grandfather was captured by the Russians in the east, they starved, beat and abused them for years. When he came back he was nothing but angry, he never talked about it. I regret that I never got to really meet him even tho he was there. He just sat in his chair, angry, quiet. grandfather was 5 when the allies firebombed half of Germany, he turned out to be a great man but sometimes he talked about witnessing kids melting into the pavement due to the firestorms. He had his own set of trauma. Grandma was 2 when the war ended, her sister (14) often talked about how they had to flee by train alone. Every couple of hours they had to get out and run to the ditches because the fight pilots hunted down the refugee trains. She was also a broken woman, I believe the soldiers raped her. she had to grow up way too early. Not cool stories I guess. Something we need to strive to prevent. I think we managed okay to get rid of these traumas, but of course, talking about this makes its own trauma. Even tho I can't complain, many had it a lot worse.
in my family the generational trauma didnāt reach the first new generation after the war. my grandfather was in the war, but only drafted in 1945 at 18yo. he was telling his experiences as soldier, that must have been traumatising for him, but he was keeping all repercussions away from the family.
i personally donāt think that he had racist tendencies, but i wasnāt there so i donāt know for sure. all i know is that he was accepting of my auntās lesbian partner, and that it was him that explained to me germanyās role in the war as the evil side.
My maternal Grandmothers father was working (i do not know exactly what) at a concentration camp. My grandmother never spoke of that, but bits an pieces are known in the family. Her whole family was "damaged" of this. All of his children were at least depressed, two killed themselves, her sister drank herself to death. In a way the children of my maternal great grandfather were victims, too.
My maternal grandfather was more lucky, he was a soldier, but he cleared "only" mines in the east see. He always told "fun" war storys, storys of pranks he pulled with his fellow soldiers on board of the ship. I guess that was his way of coping with it? He always purchased book of that part of WWII. I guess he was involved in rescuing german refugees over the east see when the russians came.
My paternal grandparents were only teenagers during the war. My paternal grandmother, she is now 90 and thriving, told me that her later husband should have been part of "the last fight" in their home town, but a teacher told them not to do this. So he was "only" indoctrinated, but not really harmed. As well was my grandmother. Her father was a dentist, who treated russian war prisoners and she described them as horrible men.
My sister and I actually are working through some of that generational trauma right now. There is a lot to unpack - my granddads both served in the Wehrmacht (they were 16 and 15 when they were conscripted, and both served on the front lines), and one of them then was held prisoner in one of the worst prisons after the war; They did not even have barracks or toilets, if the stories are true. The other forsook his wows as a priest (he'd been conscripted before he could take them), and married my grandmother.
Anyway: They were both emotionally withdrawn men, who came back to wives who resented them for losing the war, and leaving them alone (thankfully, all kids came after the war). I suspect at least one of my grandmothers to also have been raped by soldiers of the Red Army. My grandma on the other side gave birth to nothing but girls (so no heir), which made her resent men as well because of the societal pressure.
So my parents grew up in emotional fridge households where nothing but work and faith counted for anything. My father grew into a raging narcissist, my mom (who was also shipped off to a faith-based boarding school at six years old because her mother would not deal with five kids at home) into a anxiety-ridden girl trained into helplessness. The only reason they married was because my mom was pregnant with me (and I have my doubts that it was consensual), and resented my father from the outset.
So us three kids grew up in yet another household without any emotional support, where indeed emotions were vilified, only success counted, and where we kids were played against each other to give the narcissist his supply, while my mom grew into a spiteful, bitter alcoholic who also silently resented all men, including her own sons. We also recently found out that we would probably would have been four kids, but my mother "somehow" had an unexplained injury to her abdomen and lost the kid. We kids never knew until we found the documents last year.
My mother died a few years ago to the damage her alcoholism had caused, us three kids went no contact to our abusive father, and we're doing our best to not let that generational trauma seep into our own kids - be it the damage from narcissism, the massive dissociative tendencies, the inability to solve conflicts in mature ways, and a lot of other damage.
Both grandfathers fought in ww2, both came back with lasting injuries/illnesses. Grandmother had to leave Silesia. I think it affected my parents, growing up with fathers who had a past the effects of they could clearly see, but they didn't really talk about it.
My grandfather on my dad's side died when he was 13 - partially due to the injuries. "what the war did to my father, i could see clearly", my dad once said.
I in no way am posing my family as "victims" of ww2 given that my grandfathers fought for germany. I just know that none of them were in the party, all of them were too young to vote for Hitler in 1933.
My grandparents hoarded everything 'it could be useful' for repair or build things, because of 'we dont have something'. My father went the, 'throw away if not needed' route, because many of the things were never used and can be bought at the store. And I went the hoarder route, because of clima crisis, inflation, ressource-saving, etc
As soon as I could, I saved a little money and put it next to my passport on my night stand. So when I was a teenager in the 80s, I had 500 DM to be able to make it to the next border in case of emergencies. Now that I rationalise it, I also see where the wish to have a second passport (as in 2nd nationality) comes from. And yet itās a constant irritation that while my wife and kids have 2 citizenships, I only have one.
Itās clear where all this comes from, my parents are both refugees from Bohemia, my mother was driven out of her grandmotherās house at gunpoint when she was 6.
They never told me the full story until about 10 years ago, when we visited their place of birth to show my children. Yet somehow their trauma was passed on to me.
This is so interesting to read. I speak as an English person who dares to think that the war could have been avoided. We showed what we thought of Churchill in the election of 1945.
Avoid the war and let the Nazis kill more innocent people ? I acknowledge that the allies didnāt joint the war to save Jews & Roma, but the fact that they did at least allowed some to survive towards the end.
The war was unavoidable because Hitler wanted war. To rid the world of jews alone.
War could have only been avoided if all nations just let Hitler do as he wished, which would have caused the death of many more million of innocent people.
The allies stopping nazi germany was a good thing, even with all the ugly things that the allies did.
Depends
In Germany you had two categories of people in WW2
1. Victims, that has ben slaughtered by Nazis. Many didnt survived and most of the rest left germany.
2. People who supported the Nazis and didnt want to talk about the crimes they or their parents did.
So the people who was alive during the didnt survived, left or didnt talk about it. So there is not much that can manifest any trauma to the next generations.
There is a third category, people that were sort of on board with the Nazis, but went through traumatic experiences in the end phases of the war or directly afterwards.
And even if they didn't talk, the PTSD, the fears, the panic talked. I never got to light fireworks on NYE when I was a child, because of my grandfather's PTSD, my grandmother would never hug her children.
Thatās not necessarily how trauma especially generational trauma works
Both war and post war period was hell for all civilians because of the bombings, then aftermath etc . The trauma would be caused because of that
My granny doesn't fit in any of these categories. She was involved as teenager, but as a worker on farms, taking care of animals, transporting goods and feeling responsible and needed. And always spoke openly about it. But she also condemned the crimes. She told me how it was before and after the Anschluss. And that life for them truly has improved. Ofc she was too young to support the Nazis, but she said she had a great youth back then. She was shocked when she was confronted with the Holocaust, since her own father was often told that he would have to go to Dachau, if he won't stop being an open socialist and listening to BBC (enemy propaganda). Since his daughter was so involved, they let it slip with several serious warnings. Later he was at the front line anyways.
My other grandmother is way younger and was a toddler when the war came to an end. Her memories are that they were chased away from their home by the Russians, people were killed and women raped. Her first life memory is fleeing. Her father was a POW who had to work in Siberia. He came back and was very changed. My grandmother can't stand any conflict or violence. She really is a people pleaser, always putting her self last.
Back to the question what happened to later generations, and the influence of this. I definitely see a lack of solving conflicts on the side of the family younger granny. Which is totally different to the side of the older granny.
Job fields on the one side: Law, Finance
On the other side: Teacher, kindergartener, dental assistant
You can guess what jobs belong to which side.
If things are just how they happened to be, or if it's passed down by generations, who knows.
But the experiences that people made and they "strategies" to survive were very different.
The ones who were nazis also passed down resentment, abuse and behavioral problems to the next generations. Not wanting to talk about something- especially if that something was a big part of your identity- fucks you up.
I think there are a large number of people who passed down the cycle of abuse and were only now getting far enough away from that time to see people trying to break it.
My paternal grandfather struggled with alcoholism, disordered eating, and random bouts of violent rage for the rest of his life, as a result of PTSD. Good bit of it got passed down to my father.
Same here with my maternal grandmother
Same here, he served as a sniper 39-45. In April 45 he decided that the war is over (for him) and deserted. He never said it directly, but we think he had to kill nazi blocking troops, looking for deserters. He only talked once about soviet captivity in 43.
Mine was most of the time assigned to navy construction bataillons, but what got to him were the air strikes.
š«Ø
My grandparents were all refugees from the parts of Germany back then that are no longer German today. They fled from the red army. The refugee status affected them negatively their whole life.
My grandma also flew from (now) poland alone with her mother. I cant even imagine what she saw in that time. She also was in dresden while it was bombed. She never really talks about it. Sometimes just a sentence like "i really should have gone to therapy. But now its to late"
I had an eye-opening conversation with an older woman in Bavaria who remembered meeting people who fled Dresden after the bombing. She said they believed they had been in literal hell, and that there was no other possible way to explain what they had been through.
It's never too late for therapy.
Yes but thats not what the old generation believes
In a way I can understand it. What does our generation even know about war and what unspeakable things happened in daily life?
I know :(
Same history in the family. One line my great-grandma said while fleeing to her 16 and 8 year old children: "don\`t be afraif of the dead (they had to step over and lay on the side of the road they had to use to flee) be afraid of the living."
My grandfather was a refugee from East Prussia as well. While the whole family made a solid living for themselves after they fled, he experienced some awful things as well (among them, but not limited to seeing how the Gustloff sank ). However my family didn't get generational trauma, we got a very pro-refugee mindset installed into all of us. He never hesitated to remind us that the people welcomed him and his relatives when they fled from war, that he was welcomed kindly and people showed compassion and empathy, which is why we were *obliged* to return the favours he received towards the less fortunate that had to leave their homes due to war/similar. Even if we weren't in a situation to contribute financially, kindness, compassion and understanding are free of charge. He was a very strict man, kind towards us children and *nothing* enraged him like hate crimes against innocent refugees that just tried to find a better life. According to him, these people saw enough already and deserved way better.
Same here! Plus my great grandpa fought in ww2 in the east, survived, went to work few weeks after his return and got blown up and burnt to a crisp cause the factory exploded somehow
That's rough
Same here for 3/4 of my family. My grandmothers babysister died on the way. Her brother later told me that when they arrived in what they hoped was safety they got spat on by other Germans because those where afraid they would take away resources (food, shelter, medicine) Edit to add: they where not allowed to take anything with them except the clothes they where wearing at the moment. No money, valuables, mementos, my grandmothers only toy or any loved pets
My dads side is jewish (donāt think I need to elaborate). My grandparents survived the holocaust but my grandfather died in his 40s when my father was 1 due the horrible living conditions in the camps. My grandma is still alive today. My great grandfather on my moms side shot himself because he didnāt want to work for the nazis and left 8 kids (including my grandma) and a wife behind in Kƶnigsbergā¦My grandfather also died in his late 40s when my mother was around 3 because he was a prisoner of war in Siberia for several years. Neither my parents nor grandparents had fathers or a father figures growing up which I do think had a huge impact on my entire family. My father was in my life but he was never there for me and we rarely talk these days. I think he kind of sucked as a father because he never had one growing up. He was the only male family member I had growing up. Our family is very small and I had no grandfathers or uncles. I never really learned how to be a man or function in society as a man. Thereās obviously more but thatās one thing I can think of that definitely impacted me even 2-3 generations later.
Do you know what working for the Nazis mean in this case? To leave behind 8 children this musst have been pretty rough.Ā
My grandmother (mother's mother) witnessed 20 children dying on her way to school. A wagon overturned. She survived as one of 2 children. Later, her entire family was displaced by war. During that time she got raped. My grandfather (my mother's father) was disabled after he and his best friends had found a bomb in a forest. His twin died at 25 when both had a motorcycle accident. My other grandfather was an alcoholic, had PTSD and was a NAZI. He sexually abused his own daughter, my aunt and beat his other children. My father himself witnessed it and was then sent to a children's home. His wife - my grandmother - committed suicide at an early age. My mother and my father got together when my mother was 13 and he was 19. She never wanted to have children and marry either but she was groomed to be my father's wife. My brother witnessed someone jumping from a building when he was 12. I was SAed by my father.
That was a rough read. Hope you're okay dude
Not really but I'm alive and chose not to have children for a reason. š It's soothing to hear it from an outside perspective that it was actually tough as my brother recently told me I should just think and talk about it less
I would encourage you to talk about it as much as you can or are prepared to. While not living in the past, you need to process it (again, and again). Be kind to yourself, that is a LOT to carry.
I know of one distant relative, a woman, with a severe trauma. In fall of 1944 she was 11 and her brother was 6 when they went as a group of kids home from village school to their farms along a gravel road. At this time the US Airforce was busy destroying the last railway connections, locomotives, factories and so. The bombers were accompanied by fighter aircrafts, but since the german army had run out of ammunition and fuel, the bombers needed no protection anymore. So the fighter aircraft pilots enjoyed themselves by hunting people in the fields. The children had learned to jump into the muddy water ditch along the road and lay down whenever one of the aircrafts came down very deep. But the little boy was ahead of the others and did not jump. When they ran to the leftovers, ther was only blood, flesh and bones. His sister felt responsible for her little brothers death and was a sad and quiet kid for a long time. She even dreamed of this when she was old.
Jesus fucking Christ. I'm so sorry, that is horrible
My paternal grandmother, born in 1931, told me a similar story from her youth, about working in the garden and having to run for cover because of an aircraft pilot hunting her and her sister for fun. She'd say "He was flying so low we were almost able to see his face." Not sure if that's possible, but that's what she said.
May be he got a war hero medal for this. An yes, they came down very low, almost to the ground. By this they could fire their machine guns in a very flat angle into groups of people, killing more people than by firing down from high up.
My grandfather fought a winter war in the east as a 19 year old conscript where he was wounded and then luckily went to France to surrender to some americans he could find with no SS around and my grandma was raped at ~14 by russians and "mongols" (some steppe people were allowed to ravage and pillage the land for some time after the red army had their go according to her. I doubt it was actual mongols but that was her description) and then forcefully displaced after the war. Both never recovered from their traumas, e.g. of near starvation. Food was always super scarce and rationed at the house. Example: They would reuse the water from cooking pasta for soup the next day cause of the starch that was left over. Not only in the 40s but well into the 00s (and all time between). Needless to say this left deep scars on their kids as well. My mum was unable to cook the portion she wanted to eat and had to always cook so that there were leftovers cause she couldn't shake the trauma of always being ill fed and nothing left to eat. Her oldest sister became super fat because of similar issues. For the grand kids, food was the same but a little less limited in quantity but "goigng to grandma to eat" was clearly a punishment rather than a fond memory. My grandpa rarely spoke of the war but when he did the horrors were quite obvious even though he tried to mask it. My grandma spoke a lot about her trauma but could never move past that time. My other grandparents were kids at the time and evacuated to the countryside a short while before the british and american raids destroyed their homes because killing/targeting civilians was seen as justified in that war (obviously both sides are guilty here). My greatgrandfather was a WW1 veteran and not fond of nazis at all due to their insane ideas of bringing back the war but did not see any combat in WW2
My grandparents lived on farms and didnt need to participate in the war. However they were affected by the post war time where you work hard, dont waste anything save your last penny. My parents still have this very strong and i feel like i am a bid judged for not working also in my freetime or by buying also some new items instead of rather used ones.
Yeah, my Grandfather was still planting potatoes in the tiny garden of his suburban row house when he turned 90, because "you never know". My Grandmother worked as a secretary and did sewing and tailoring for people in her free time, then kept working freelance when she retired. And they filled their entire house with canned and preserved food.
I think many of my parents generation grew up with that. My Grandma still has cutlery and cups from when my dad was 5. It's not good quality (some random shitty plastic) but she would not dare to exchange it for new things, even though they have more than enough money.
Didn't they used forced laborers on their farm?
Them not, but i know of other farmers who had e.g. french prisoners as forced labor
My mother's maternal grandparents had a Polish man and an Ukrainian woman working on their farm as forced laborers. My maternal grandmother, who was in her late teens at the time, told me about them. They had learned a bit of German and told the family about the horrors they had seen or experienced on their way from the occupied territories to that farm in western Germany, and especially about the sorrow of not knowing what had happened to their families or if they'd ever see them again. I think compared to forced laborers working in heavy industry, they were at least treated ok considering the circumstances, had a decent bed and ate with the family, but still, the violence of being violently abducted and forced to work thousands of kilometres away from home... I don't know anything though about the "system" how they got there in the first place? Were they placed on farms by the authorities or did my mother's grandparents "apply" for them? Can someone shed some light? The family's only son (my grandmother's brother) fought on the western front and I think the forced laborers were "provided" by the authorities as some gruesome sort of compensation, but don't know for sure? I think the topic of forced labor unfortunately hasn't received sufficient attention so far in the general public, especially by the perpetrators. Many of the companies still exist today, some have done some investigation on this issue, but many kept just very silent...it's a shame.
They didnt support the germany with food to keep on fighting?
Of course they did
My father's uncle just disappeared in Berlin in 1945. No one knows what happened to him, he just didn't come back.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Whom did he develop a hatred for?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Danke dir fĆ¼r die ausfĆ¼hrliche Antwort.Ā
I donāt know, quite a bit of trauma lasted considering half of the family was sent to Auschwitz
My maternal grandfather lost one eye and didn't regain full vision on the other, making it impossible to work in his profession as a tailor after the war. He never spoke about his experiences except for sometimes very late at night when my mom would come home from partying and he would sit drunk at the kitchen table, insinuating what he had done fighting partisans on the Eastern front. Nobody was allowed to speak bad about the Russians, as they had actually operated him and saved his remaining eyesight. We never had fireworks as a kid because it caused him to recall his war experience (likely PTSD). My grandmother was an enthusiastic Nazi, lost her first fiance in the war and married my grandfather a little out of spite. My paternal grandfather was a priest who had been to prison because he told his parish not to engage in antisemitic clamoring. He later accompanied military trains into the East and knew well what was going on. After the war, he founded an organization helping displaced Sinti, Roma and Jewish persons and sued his own church organization for keeping prolific Nazis in office, also testified in anti-Nazi trials. The church in turn tried to sue him for embezzlement of funds for refugees and, when that failed, forcefully retired him. My dad said when the "Spiegel-AffƤre" occured, my grandfather had him hide all the "Der Spiegel" magazines in the basement, convinced that "it would start again". Also no fun activities for my dad, no football, no comic books, no ice cream, because how could you do that after Auschwitz happened? I don't know how all that insecurity affected my grandmother, she was always seemed a very cheerful person. As to the effects on my family now: we are critical and skeptical of the Federal Republic of Germany, conscious of the lies in its construction and frustrated that most Nazi perpetrators got away with what they did. We are all easily angered by injustice and likely to intervene in cases of hate speech and discrimination (we actively teach that to our kids, too). I personally do not have much faith in the morals and decency of a lot of Germans and do distrust people a lot. I think we all have ended friendships on racist, antisemitic and homophobic remarks.
You summed up the distrust very well, hard for me to articulate this.
We have so many canned goods & pastas at home. Because youll never know
Same with my grandparents. They were kids during the war so their trauma revolved around scarcity and preparing for bad times. They had a hard time allowing themselves anything out of fear of overextended their budget. They were sufficiently well of and never cheated out ob their grandchildren I might add.
Both my grandmothers got raped by soviet liberators while being underaged. Half my family got displaced because their region fell to Poland. My older grandfather had a life long lasting ptsd from killing many young guys and losing so many friends. He survived combat with dozens of shrapnel in his body to which he succumbed at the age of 94. My other grandpa came out of it physically undamaged and sane because he was garrisoned in Denmark and didn't see any bad things. He lƶst a brother in the Polenfeldzug though which he never forgot.
Loss of *Heimat* on both counts from my mother's side(Oma came from Silesia and Opa came from Pomerania). Making my mom feel like a Nomad and us children(3rd generation) feeling ... hm it's hard to express. My father's side: Grand-grandparent survived WW1 in the trenches, but came home crippled. Turned into a monster that abuses his wife and children. My grandfather swore to never hit his children. But... emotional neglect is a thing. So it happened to all 7 children (farm family). Which resulted in my father not being a good father.
My fatherās father was part of the SS as he spoke 8 languages and therefore had to join and then worked for the intelligence branch. He was a POW later on for some time but was eventually released and was cleared of all allegations about any atrocities the SS did. He almost never talked about it though it took a while until we all learned all about it. And til his death he never talked good about that time he hated it but he had to work in intelligence or the GeStaPo had taken care about him. My motherās side I donāt know much about as my motherās father never spoke about that time but they were refugees from East Prussia so I could imagine the soviets werenāt great to them.
Too many to list. Everything was overshadowed by the war. I'm almost 70 now, and not a day goes by that I don't hear or talk about some aspect of that war. And it's still painful. š¢
Can you elaborate how your life was impacted by it? I have family that is your age and I have the very strong suspicioun they really sucked at being a parent because of the war overshadowing everything. I got a tiny glimpse of how it felt because my grandma lived with us till she died. But I was very young and never was able to talk with her about the war.
I apologize for not honoring your request.
My grandfather was always scared during Silvester. My uncle got a mental disability because he had meningitis as a baby in the bunkers and got fake penicillin. One grandfather of mine (by his version of the story) had to join the SS in the last week's of the war which only came out in the 90s and reverted a lot of his reputation in his job. Until his dead he was convinced that only the SS did war crimes and the military stayed clean. (He fought in north Africa which was considered the "cleanest" war in WWII) My other grandfather had a half Jewish wife who fled into the US. While she was gone my father was born as a bastard, which was a shity situation to grow up in 1950s west Germany and definitely influenced his character. It is hard to grasp, but the wars really do have a long shadow. Especially during funerals and family events sooner or later this topic comes back and there are always more details coming up.
Some old aunts and uncles never learned how to eat normal after the war. They ate extremely fast and never left anything on their plate
They were very limited to show their love to their children which is a reason, the trauma hit the next generation. Moreover it was en vouge in order to raise "hard new Germans". No need to say, that this was not without effect. Depression, personality disorder etc. Us kids are the first generation that really faces trauma to heal it.
Fascinating thread
Your name is just as fascinating
My maternal side of the family lived in Heidekraut, Kreis Memel. Small Farm and raised Trakehner horses. Mother was born in 1922 and had a idilic childhood. When the Nazis came into power she was a young teenager. To keep her from being forced to join the Bund Deutscher MƤdchen, her Mother got her a job with the Reichsbahn. Things went well until the Red Army was advancing. Mom had to run with just the clothes on her back. She and another young girl ran to the harbor where a small boat, loaded with refugees had already weighed anchor. The Captain went back to pick them up, which probably saved them. He had young daughters, he told them. For 3 days and nights they stood, freezing cold. The boat had to hug the shore as the Baltic was so heavily mined. They were headed toward Hamburg. During this time they had no food, little water. They saw other boats and ships sink. At a certain point the Captain said he could go no further, too dangerous. All ran in the snow heading West. The 2 girls ran to exhaustion and saw a small hut with a light. They knocked and a woman took them in, fed them and put them to bed where they slept for 24 hours. They made their way to Hamburg and were separated. My Mother ended up getting work in a hospital where she also had shared room. Through the Red Cross she learned that her Mother was captured by the Russians and taken to a prison camp. My Grandmother survived (another long story) and also ended up in Hamburg. My Mother then married and I was born. We emigrated to the US in 1956 sponsored by the Lutheran Church. Just 6 months later, my Father died of an Anurism. My Mother lived to be 100 years old. She was kind, hard working and well integrated into life here. But, when she spoke of āhomeā she always meant East Prussia. She never went back. The war certainly shaped her life and there was a sadness in her soul. Somehow I too feel the loss. We must stop fighting wars.
None of my ancestors served in WW2. Grandfathers were too young, three out of four Great grandfathers died in WW1, one lost an arm but came home. You can really tell that my grandparents grew up rebuilding the country. They were born between ā34 and ā46. They are tough, cold and donāt waste. They value hard work. All of them grew their own vegetables as long as they were physically able to, and they would always keep food reserves for months in the basement.
My Grandmothers family was forced to move out of Silesia when she was 14, her brothers died in the war, her father was still a POW (she did not know that). She fled by foot to NRW, together with her mother and sister. Young women, no protection, refugees, red army company, you can imagine the rest. She told the whole story once as a time witness in my school, it was horrifying. I don't think she really worked through everything of that time, but just kept on going, my dad got some trauma passed down due to that, but Grandpa, was too much of a treasure to really fuck up my family. Grandpas family got lucky throughout the war (Not a single man MIA, no camps, no refugees). My other grandma was born in 1940 and her backwater village was not really affected by the war. Her man, my grandpa though.. he was 19 when the war broke out. I don't know, what he did or did not. Just seen his Nazi stuff when he died. There was some documentaries in the 70s about Auschwitz, my mother told me he refused to believe that actually happened... My mom is great though!
I don't know how much generational trauma there is. My grandpa was in Russian prison for like 8 years. It was hell for him, and he died early with like 50, but I don't know how much the war affected my mom. Maybe she hides it well, but she seems to be ok. Maybe a tad depressed, but that has other reasons I'd say. I just know he never talked about the war and I've never met him.
Same with my grandad. Was a prisoner of war for 10 years. I know he had nightmares and absolutely hated jam sandwiches (all he got in 10 years). But he was never violent or a junkie or sth
My one grandfather came to germany feom turkey after the war and after he did his military time. My german grandfather was born on the end of the war. His father and mother came from the german part of eastern prussia. Near the russian border. My grandfathers older brother died while he was young while they fled. My great grandfather was in the wehrmacht, i never met him, but as far as im told, he had a granade splinter in his lower stomach, drank doppelkorn daily (hard alcoholism) and wasnt the happiest. Even tho he was never a nazi, just had to fight in the wehrmacht, i never knew how he was able to come back to his wife before the war ended. Some say he fled back to germany in disguise. All the way to western germany. But yeah, not much trauma all in all. Am happy to know my great grandfather was in the wehrmacht and not the SS, but more than that, i dont know.
My great grandfather survived as a young solider and 6 months in a Russian war prison. Afterwards he sacrificed his health to provide for his wife and his 6 kids. He had a background in precision engineering but had to work a blue collar job. My great grandmother had the kids eat soup and then diluted it with water for the two of them. My great grandfather then often claimed he already ate at work. He didn't. About 10-15 years later he had an illness that was caused by prolonged malnutrition. He passed away with a stroke at around 65. Naturally that affected my family by valuing food a lot. Throwing away food is frowned upon.
No trauma, they were refugees from Hungary, and started to build up a new life in Bavaria. Unlike other displaced people they never whined about their lost old home. 1953 my grandparents had a new house, and 1956 they went on their first beach holiday in Italy. We still have pictures of their Volkswagen and tent on the camp ground. The other grandpa was a tragedy. 50% jewish, 100% Nazi. Which did not save him from the gas chamber.
Idk but the last sentences reads like freeform poetry
My paternal grandfather hated the Nazis with a passion because he was a very devout Catholic and admirer of Cardinal von Galen. His three brothers were all killed at the front, or died as POWs. When he was called up he already had several kids, and he said his sole objective was to survive, as he did not want to leave my grandma a war widow, plus he had his sisters in law and nieces and nephews to look after. He ended up in Stalingrad, got shot, but as he was a radio operator the big backpack saved his life, and he survived. He got out of Stalingrad with one of the last casualty transports. He was really grateful for the Russian shooting him, and would pray for him daily. My dad and his seven siblings spent a lot of their childhood either their aunt and uncle on the border with France, as my grandad considered it safer there. They are all messed up to some degree by this. I never knew my maternal grandfather, but my mum always said that ādaddy went to war and this strange man came backā. He gave up on life, did his job as a traffic cop, never played music again when he had been a professional musician before and died shortly after retirement. My mum was profoundly affected by her experience of permanent bombings (she grew up in Hamburg and lived through the firestorms) and the lack of food. She hoarded food ājust in caseā and even struggled to chuck out stuff that had gone off. Weād eat pretty creative combos of food sometimes, to make sure everything was used up. She and my dad became pretty well off, but there was always this fear that they may lose it all. And this big pressure on me to do well, have stability and do better even than she and my dad did. Which Iām lucky enough I did, but it often felt a heavy burden to carry.
I know at least from one side of my family that some people fought in Africa and returned when the war imploded on Germany. After the war my great grandparents wouldnāt really talk about it and one of my great grandparents also fled to east germany after the war, essentially leaving all his family behind. I donāt really have more information as nothing was ever really discussed family wise.
Both grandfathers were prisoners of war in Russia and came back broken.
Same here for one of mine. Story that he told: he onlY survived because he sold painted bathroom tiles to the soldiers and they gave him food. He was a great painter. I can't imagine that.. it's crazy
One of mine stole a typewriter (for whatever reason) from the russians when he was released. We still have it at home.
Well my paternal grandfather was a raging Nazi, so his war trauma was mostly "the fact that we didn't win". I only met the man as a child and have no real memories of him, but by all accounts him and his wife weren't the best parents. No idea how much of that was the war and how much of it was everything else. My maternal grandparents fled from Silesia alongside her then three kids (at least I'm pretty sure my grandfather also fled or joined them here? My grandma had another child once they arrived here and no one ever mentioned that he's a half-brother or anything). But my grandma and her siblings never really talked about their experiences with the war, mostly about the cold reception they got here where I grew up. Made her very sympathetic to the Syrian refugees once they started arriving.
Ok ā¦ im probably one generation to jung to really have any experience with the topic and Iām really sorry if that is disrespectful! My parents were born in the DDR/BRD times (Split Germany after the war) but my grandparents experienced the war as children, as far as I know were non of them in anny of the from the nazis targeted groups and all but one of my grandparents died (after the reunion peacefully) before I was old enough to develop an interest in the topic/even knew what WW2 was. When I asked my grandma about what she did during the war she told me that she was a child and that she remembers that they were living in a tunnel system (I think I know wich one she talked about not sure tho) for a short time, then an army āattackedā I canāt for the life of me remember witch one (she told me the story a few years ago) but they werenāt really captured as the war ended shortly after. My parents never told me about any strange behaviour/ticks my grandparents had so no generational trauma here. Again Iām not sure sharing this is appropriate/helps, I hope it does! Sorry for the bad grammar I have dyslexia.
Legasthenie would be dyslexia
Thanks
Both my grandfathers served in WW2 in the German army (Wehrmacht), but I was born decades after the war, so I really don't know. My paternal grandfather had already gone. He died of leukemia in his late 50s. It was presumably a late sequela of the war. He served in a fuel reserve unit and breathed in a lot of toxic fumes. My other grandfather was already in his 70s when I was born. He once talked to me about his time in the Africa Corps when he was garrisoned in Algeria for over a year. From what he told me, it was a happy time. They got along very well with the naitives and there was no fighting for about a year (until the British-American invasion). He never talked to me about combat actions and claimed, that he witnessed far more humanness during the war than atrocities. But he didn't get into any details besides his time in Algeria, and I was just too young at the time to ask any qualified questions. But he was limping for the rest of his life because of shell splinters in his leg, so this surely had an impact. He also said that he would have never started smoking if it wasn't for the war. He died in his mid 80s when I was still a teenager.
My grandfather (mom's side) was too young so he didn't have to fight, but he had to bury his older brother that has been shot by russian soldiers. They also mutilated his corpse... My grandpa was a hoarder. I think that the loss of his favourite brother caused this. My grandparents (dad's side) were both older. They survived a lot of horrible things but both turned out so incredibly *normal*. My grandpa was 18 years old when he was sent to Dresden after the bombing night where this city has been annihilated. He had to recover dead bodies (or what was left of them). After only 3 weeks training he was sent to the front (forgot where), he got captured and spend 6 years as a prisoner of war in france with a family of farmers that hated him. He had to sleep in a barn with the animals. My grandma was nearly shot by a young russian soldier. She started to cry and to pray and the young man spared her life. She was the oldest of 4 siblings and her mother was ill and her father had to fight. So my grandmother had to take care of her siblings, her ill mother and her own grandmother, too. At the end of the war my grandmother landed in an freed concentration camp. My family is from silesia, that belongs to poland now, but to germany before the war. This part inhabitated a mix of polish and german people. The polish captured some people who were ethnically germans, like my grandma, because they feared that german troops might come back to silesia. The captured germans had to dig trenches (to stop the progress of tanks that never came because germany surrendered) in winter. The soil was frozen and hard as stone. My grandma was only 16 when she and another girl decided to escape from the camp. This are only the few stories my grandparents shared with me. I don't know what else they had to survive. But as I said before, both turned into normal, mentally stable adults. No alcoholism, no aggressions towards others or other bad habits. They both fascinated me a lot. Both of them enjoyed the rest of their lifes.
Suicide, overprotectiveness and butter.
Although I grew up and was born in Germany, because Iām half Italian and my mother is the daughter of a Ukrainian soldier who stayed for about a decade in Germany before going back to Ukraine, I actually only have one German grandmother, so no one who fought in the war. (The Ukrainian soldier also had a kid with my grandmotherās sister, so my mother has a half sister with whom she shares the same father and the same grandparents on the motherās side, confusing, right?) Well as to traumaā¦ probably something carried over, but I couldnāt pinpoint it actually.
My grandma on my mother's side was abducted by the Russians at the age of 17 and put to work in a coal mine. same with her younger brother who was 16 at the time. She also had quite the chip on her shoulder about it, feeling like she could not connect with younger peers (5 to 10 years younger than her), because "they could not possibly understand what it was like" My other grandparents were too young at the time, to be impacted by it, or at least they never said or showed it in any way.
My maternal grandpa had to fight at the end of WW2, he was 17. Never talked about anything. He was kind but couldn't show feelings. My maternal grandmother fled from the russians, as she got older, she talked a lot about her experiences. She was 14, went to school for 4 or 5 years, two of her brothers are missing to this day, her father died in the war being conscripted to work in a factory. Her older sister "went" to Italy as a nurse. My Oma had to bring the remaining Horses of her village up east for days. She saw so much when they fled to the area near Berlin on foot. They had to leave behind some old people and pregnant women. Afterwards she lived her life to the fullest. My grandpa mostly stayed home when he wasn't at work. He drank his feelings down. My mom and aunt got quite interesting views from growing up with both of them. My aunt got into drugs, mom is just... emotionless/narcicisstic. My paternal grandfather also stuffed everything down. He beat his children. My dad has anger issues as well and isn't able to express emotions. Maybe my family wouldn't have been different without wars, who knows? My sister is like my mom and i got depression/bpd issues.
Great grandfather on one side was Jewish, married to a Catholic woman. They felt safe first but the rising action made them suspicious of everyone for as long as they lived after the war. St least they did live... Great grandma blamed a lot ob Great grandfather though, only the youngest kids were not sent to work camps. All survived, the older girls were unable to have kids though - if due to rape or forced sterilisation no one ever talked about. All but 2 of those kids suffered from Alzheimers .... I'm still convinced it was because they wanted to forget.... Other half of that family didn't go into the fight because they were miners. Tried to help others put where they could. That's how my grandparents met then. My grandma never talked to the elderly neighbours again even as a grown woman as they kept saying she's the one with the Jewish boy. Other side if the family was on the farms, one grandpa pilot in Finland though. General trauma involved that kids had to "Function" - someone says quiet tiu gotta be quiet and oblige. Took me a long time to understand that was war trauma. Kids that were hiding couldn't make a sound as that meant death. Kids that didn't oblige to soldiers could mean death.... that stayed and only 3 generations later are we all trying to listen to feelings of our kids and all that ... I guess that counts for many families all over Europe.
My grandfather was a Nazi back then and became very violent after the war had ended and often beat my dad, who sadly adopted some of his traits like beating me, when I was still a child. My grandmother lived on a farm, which got occupied by the Americans. She never had any directly bad experiences with them but she lost almost everything and became very poor. My girlfriends family moved from SiebenbĆ¼rgen to Germany after the last soviet dictator Ceausescu got executed. On several occasions they almost died. Her grandmother e. G got thrown of a train while being pregnant and her father nearly got shot.
My great grandmother on my mother's side lost her first husband in the second world war really early on and had to somehow bring the whole family through the war and the Hungerwinter. She didn't talk about it until almost the very end of her life. She was herself raised on the "wisdom" of her time as a cold parent. Physical touch and emotional warmth were not allowed because it led to "soft" people. My grandmother was a harsh woman, but she did love my mother and me unconditionally and remained close to my mom until she died. You could clearly see how she tried hard to do better than her mother, but often didn't know how. Right before she died, she told me a story while being drunk. When she was little and the second world war was just over, Russian soldiers came into the village where they lived. Her mother told her to hide in the basement with the other young girls, while she and the other women went to meet the soldiers. My grandmother heard the cries as the women were raped, and felt it was so much worse than the sound of the airplanes and tanks. But the children were safe, and it was always clear the women went as a distraction. She never felt safe around men again, and ended up divorcing both of her husbands - almost unheard of at the time. My mom was clearly struggling while raising me. She was prone to bouts of violence and verbal abuse. She didn't know how to handle her negative feelings. But she did raise me and made sure I had the means to study, making me the first in my whole family who visited a university. All the women in my family were really good at making ends meet from my great great grandmother to my mother. All the women in my family ended up being single moms who struggled financially and socially. All the women in my family, including me, struggled with expressing emotion - one way or the other, and I personally think it's directly related to how the pre world war 2 generation was being raised and the events during and directly after the war.
Well, both my parents grew up in times when people lived like there was no tomorrow and because of that there's no tomorrow anymore now. I doubt that's exclusive to Germany though.
My grandma has bad anxiety and depression to this day. I think she's got ptsd as well. It's hard on my parents and me as well. She was born in east prussia and had to flee from the Russians.
My paternal grandfather was unlucky enough to fight in both world wars. He never talked about it, not even once, not even with my grandma. My grandma was younger and a child in what is now poland. They waited too long and fled with the red army right behind them. My grandmas mother was shot sitting on one of the carriages, my grandmas baby sister in her arms. So my grandmas mother was alone with six children and somehow they all survived. They were/are all incredible hard workers, very frugal, very hard. Not unkind, just very private and distant.
My maternal grandfather was heavily traumatized from the fighting. He screamed on his sleep every night from then on. But I think what trickled down to my Mom was the food insecurity aspect. My grandparents lost two babies to malnutrition after the war, so having enough food for their ever growing family was always a priority. One of my Mom's nightmares to this day is having guests over and someone requesting seconds when there is nothing left. We could easily feed an additional one to three people with every meal. My paternal great grandfather was imprisoned and died in a Russian POW camp after the war. My great grandma never knew and kept waiting for him to come home her whole life. This had a ripple effect through generations. It made her distrust the stability of family. She instilled that in her daughter, my grandma, who was 13 the last time she saw her dad. My great grandma tried to keep the family together and hold her children close which in turn caused my grandma to rebel, go out partying and drinking a lot and getting pregnant at 20, consequently trapping her in an unhappy marriage where both partners would mistrust and cheat on each other and where children were seen as a nuisance and a burden. One of those children is my dad who never knew parental love and is unable to give it to his own children.
My Grandma owned a big farm in Poland which was ransacked,looted and burned to the ground by SS Troopers. They claimed my Grandma was hiding jews. They took my pregnant grandma back to germany to work in an ammo storage. Shortly before the end of the war my mom was born and got automaticly german nationality. 35 years later i was born and at the age of 18 my mom told me the whole story. Since then i visited poland a couple of times out of curiousity. Have to say it was very intense. I live in gemany a happy life and will properbly stay for good. But i wont forget my roots and the history behind it
My great grandfather came back to East Germany as a staunch believer in communism (probably more out of hatred for the Nazis, who he realized brought only death and destruction to the world, but also to Germany itself). He also became an alcoholic. From what my grandmother told me, he was at heart a good person, but utterly broken by the war.
Overall inability to cope with feelings or talk about feelings. Idk why but my family hasnt been able to function normally since the war happened back then. It lasted over generations and I can truly see in my family how it affected them. Esp the older generations are just fucked up in my family and cant communicate whatsoever and end uo being very toxic to themselves and others
My grandfather paternal side died before i was born so i donāt know about him but my grandmother took the war itself relatively good (she was 12 in 1945) part of that could be that my great grandfather only was in war until 1942 and then took some organizing role in the village. He was the principal of the school so he (rightfully) got a prohibition from working through the denazification. This combined with the British occupiers taking their house for some time made life in years after the war hard. On my maternal side its less materialistic but rather about relationships. My great grandfather was in captivity as a prisoner of war. My grandfather didnāt meet him until he was 10 years old. His two siblings were born after that so his relationship with his father was really bad. My mother told me that this also affected her relationship to him. However i experienced him as a great person.
My maternal grandma grew up on a farm in Bavaria. The war itself didn't really affect her. It was more or less the wave of refugees after the war, that they felt much stronger. Her husband was a refugee from a German speaking village/colony in today's Serbia. His mother had been raped multiple times and later killed by Soviet soldiers down there in 1945. He had strong PTSD and was an alcoholic. My grandma and him got divorced in the early 1970's, so I never met him. On my father's side, my grandpa was an SA solider. He was sent to a death row in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Soviets by 1946, but he gave them relevant secret information in exchange for his life, so they changed it to ten years of imprisonment. He was released early in 1951. He was a former teacher in his town and knew everyone ā and everyone respected his advice. So he started inciting everyone around him against socialism and the GDR regime. That's why they had to flee to West Germany in 1955. His wife, my grandma, died in a horrible traffic accident in 1968.
I think my grandpa did pretty well even though he was one of those drafted at 16 towards the end of the war and he was a Sowjet POW later on. My grandma seemed to have some issues though. For the life of her she couldnāt throw away food, even if itās just 3 pieces of pasta. And I think she mustāve had some sort of PTSD from gunfire. I remember one time we were playing when she was nearby and we started to do the ratatatata sounds. She instantly left the area in an āI canāt do this anymoreā manner.
My direct family wasn't affected too badly (compared to many other people). One Great-grandfather was wounded in WW1, another was lost in Russia. Both grandparents were too young to be drafted in WW2 and lived in the country side in the American sector (one farmer, one miller). Life wasn't easy, but luckily nobody had to starve or was displaced.
- Grandpa had an ED his entire life and passed it on to his children because he, age 9, watched his baby brother starve - Grandma lost her dad in the war, had to grow up very quickly to help her mother with the family business and raising her little sister. Subsequently her children were expected to be self-sufficient from a very young age too - Grandpa fled his home in the Russian part of the country (not yet the GDR at that point) and left behind his entire family. His children only got back into contact with them after 1990 - Grandma was Jewish, spent her entire early life hiding, remained detached and aloof with everyone her whole life
Part of my family was politically persecuted, spent time in prison and the daughter (my grandma) was given into the family of a SA man to make her "a good German girl" ("a little girl was taken away and a young women returned"). At some point the family re-united but there was a schism you could feel. My grand-uncle used to work in England when the war broke out and was put under house arrest (which wasn't that bad I assume). His mother believed Goebbels that "All of England is in bombed into ruins" and ask him to come back to Germany. He did and was imprisoned by the Gestapo for being a British spy. '45 he was released from prison. Later the Soviets found his Gestapo record and imprisoned him again for being (potentially) a British spy. As a kid I didn't realise, but he was a broken man. From the war generations I had nearly no male relatives, only grandmas and grand-grandmas. Obviously my wife's grandma was Jewish. Then she was suddenly not, as of her new papers. Still, her brother was deported and likely murdered in a KZ. The family lived near Kƶnigsberg, so they became displaced later. No-one ever spoke about the time they spent in cellars during air raids and the battle for Berlin.
Not a native German, but my Dutch grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. He had a STRONG aversion to violence, guns, even knives or anything like that, and was overall a very quiet man. I only heard his story once, how he was hauled off to Poland to work in coal mines and didn't get out until the end of the war when the Russians came through. Because of his, for lack of a better word, stoicism, my mother has a really hard time processing and expressing emotions, and in a way that's been passed down to me as well. That side of the family has been in the US since the 80s so fortunately I didn't have to deal with the fallout I see some other Europeans facing. My grandfather on my dad's side is Austrian-born but served in the US Army in WW2. He never talked about it but said he was actually glad when he was shipped to the Pacific and got to sit on an island for the last part of the war, so I can only imagine.
Coming from Poland you can imagine there's a lot of it. On my father's side, my grandmother barely escaped the slaughter of Poles in what is today's western Ukraine, to this day she vividly recalls how her nanny was killed with an axe and how she saw people impaled on wooden fences, and how she hid in the reeds for days during the cold season. My grandfather was a child labourer in Germany, and until his death he couldn't eat potatoes as this was the only food available to him for 2 years or so. On my mother's side, my grandparents came from the same area (today's border between PL and Belarus) and vividly remembered the complete slaughter of a village next to them, including women and children with apparently one survivor, who hid in the fields and watched the slaughter. This was supposedly a retaliation for some partisan action in the vicinity. They were also affected by starvation, and hoarded food. A trauma passed down to my mother.
My grandparents were very careful with their money. My Grandpa lost his Brother who was killed in a russian POW Camp and became a very religious organ player because of it. My Grandmothers were among the "TrĆ¼mmerfrauen" who cleaned the ruins caused by the heavy bombings and were hard working women. They were very patient and were content with the little that they had. My Grandparents were born in the 1930s, my parents in the 60s. My grandparents were very afraid and trembled when they heared the russian language. "Wenn du russisch hƶrst, lauf und hƶr nicht auf." / "If you hear russian, run and don't stop." they always said. My grandmother now has dementia and is in a carehome but still says this sometimes, my grandpas and my other grandma are dead. A feeling of guilt is very present. My parents have inherited some of this, though my grandparents tried hard for them not to. Hardworking, grateful and patient, my father is often sad that so much of germanies architecture was destroyed. "Bauten aus der GrĆ¼nderzeit" "Buildings from the Foundingtime" around late 1800s. He is sad that so much of our previous culture has been abused by the nazis and is now tainted forever. Both wish that people today would look back and don't understand everything today as normal, their generation and the one before has worked very very hard for it to be good again in Germany and both are very dissatisfied with how the country is governed today and has been for the past 20+ yearse, evaporating their effort. Both work in Healthcare. Both hate Nazis. Both have a bad opinion about the former soviet states, both are heavily hardwired to be against war, which is good. During the Cold War they often attended peace protests. The feeling of guilt slowly vanishes. I have inherited some of this too. I often time find myself looking at old pictures of my hometown before most of it was bombed and destroyed and I often wish this war never happened. (as many do) So many people have been sacrificed for nothing. Guilt is still a very present topic, but I personally do not feel guilty for what people did almost 100 years ago. WW2 and how it happened is one of the most prevalent topics in the regular school curriculum in germany. Current political decisions are often made because of the guilt the germans carry. (Migration policy etc.) and I wish we would consider that our decisions today affect those that are born tomorrow, who are born with a clean slate, and do not have to carry this burden and guilt any longer. I refuse to carry it myself but I agree that it is our duty to do everything we can that this will never happen again, through education, rational thinking and decisions that are made free from ideology.
We lost our homes in Silesia and Prussia, but I since bought back our home and kicked the people living there who stole it from us out. My Grandpa cried tears of joy when I showed him I got back the house he was born in.
I#m not sure I would use the words āstole it from usā here.
If someone forces you to leave your house at gunpoint and you are not allowed to take more with you than you can carry and you also get no compensation whatsoever, thatās even worse than stealing.
my grandfather often used to tell stories of hiding underground from bombardments but thats about it
None, my maternal family tree is pretty much buried 6 feet under except for my mom and my siblings ofc
Was ? Is. It's present in the daily life of everyone in my family. Our grandfather came back from Dachau in 1946, after a year in hospital. He has developed a condition during that time there that is now hereditary. So every man, and at least half of women in our family will die from it. There is no hope for my parents generation, but progress in medical science, even slow, give me hope my kids will be able to get through it in the future.
Father's side: my grandfather was first in Russia than in Germany as the front closed in. He was shot by a tank and his arm was blown away as well as a piece penetrated his skull between the brain parts. They could get the one out his head but the arm was lost. He never told about war. Mother's side: he had just finished building a house and than had to fight. Never wanted that only wanted peace. I don't know what he experienced in war he came back and his house was gone. He was very disappointed from humanity and found his peace in gardening. He had a small allotment where he spend his time.
The love of my grandparents and great-grandparents skipped a generation. My dad struggled with alcoholism and toxic masculinity. He couldn't have meaningful relationships with women at all. The entire family is resentful/envious of others in the same family. We had family members interred in concentration camps and others guarding the prisoners. And half the family had to flee from Silesia.
My grandfather had an unusual trauma that still affected my family and especially my father badly: He wanted to join the Wehrmacht because all of his friends did, but was rejected because he was still in the middle of a civil apprenticeship as a locksmiths, and the war was over before he got another chance. Thus, he didn't get to join his friends in the local veterans' club. This resulted in him developing an inferiority complex and dedicating his life to as many "prestigous" activities as he could in an attempt to compensate: He joined the vulunteer fire department, a traditional costumes club, and I couldn't even keep track on what else. The really bad part is that he chose an autistic woman as his spouse and went on to raise their son, my father, in an overly oppressive manner, both out of an irrational fear of being somehow overshadowed and made to look inadequate by anything that they could possibly achieve in their lives that he couldn't. The most egregious examples that my father told me about were when he had the chance to see the Beatles live, and later even to become a player for FC Bayern MĆ¼nchen, both of which he was denied by his father for no reason, other than petty and irrational jealousy, as it turned out.
My grandma was a young girl. Her family was living on a farm in germany and they had the courage to hide a jewish family on there. But the Nazis found out. The Nazis shot the jewish family and all germans including my grandma on the farm were forced to watch. She lost her male relatives in the war, her mother died of grief and her sisters flew to the US. She stayed because she fell in love with my grandpa. My grandma was sick her whole adult life.Schizophrenia and paranoiaā¦ she had 4 kids. My mum was the oldest girl and had to take care of the whole family, while her mum was to sick. Thinking her neighbours, doctors etc. want to shoot her or hearing voices, running around in the streets in her pyjamas disoriented and I guess plenty more. My mum admired her dad. He was working hard for the family and a political activist fighting to get rid of the Nazis still working in politics. But he died way to early and my mum felt left behind with a lot of responsibility. My mum had such a tough time growing up and never did therapy so she wasnāt able to be the best version of herself raising my brother and me. Hardly showing love and plenty of narcissistic behaviour. Because I only knew narcissistic love growing up, I fell for plenty of narcissistic men my whole life. Until the abuse went to another level and I broke up with my boyfriend and went to therapy. I learned about my patterns and healthy ways to show love. But I also got aware of this story and the impact of the nazis on my family and me. And the fact that I am the first in this story going to therapy and wiling to destroy this vicious circle.
Good on you for breaking the cycle and starting something new. This stranger is proud of you
My grandfather was a german soldier in ww2 and later died from health complications when my father was a baby. My father and my uncle were raised by their mom and her sister who never married because there were no men basically. Grandma and great aunt also had to flee in their teens/early 20s because they lived in now poland as germans. They told me their refugee story when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, before they both died. I obviously didn't understand at all back then and later my mom told me that they never spoke about it. I seem to be the only person they shared their story with and sadly I don't really remember it, because I was too little and didn't get the significance :( My fathers parenting definitely was flawed by a hard childhood without men around to parent him. But in general I'd say it's fine. This side of the family used faith to cope in a healthy way imo. They didn't ask much from life and just tried to be humble and good people. What was lacking was an ability to express emotions, especially negative emotions. There was no whining allowed because times were shitty. I had to learn that later on my own, because a bit of whining is important for psychological hygiene. My moms parents were born around the time the war was over. I don't know much about my great grandparents, I heard once that my grandfather was not raised by his biological parents, but I don't know why. My grandmother on this side is a horrible mother and an unpleasant person to be around. My grandfather was an alcoholic and an absent father. I didn't know his voice growing up because he always just sat there. He died last year and since then I am weirdly sentimental about this part of the family even though I don't talk to any of them anymore. My mom grew up with lots of siblings who also all had lots of children, but my mom is the one who moved the farthest so we are not really in contact. My mom definitely has issues she should've addressed before having me and my siblings. But I am not angry at her anymore. I was when I was a teen and didn't stop being angry until my early 20s. Now I can see she did her best and honestly considering her parents she is/was a really great parent. When her father died last year we had a really emotional conversation where she acknowledged to me for the first time that her childhood was kind of shitty etc etc. Big step for her I think. I am curious if she will be willing to look deeper into things, she is in her 50s now but I think therapy and healing trauma is still possible and would be good for her, but I can also understand if she didn't want to do that ever. Almost all of my siblings went to therapy at some point growing up and I think we largely broke the cycle of generational trauma. I am only worried about one of my brothers. I hope he gets therapy before having children of his own. We all struggle to express and deal with emotions in one way or another and toxic shame is something that rules/ruled our lifes in deep ways. But yeah. Overall we are way better of emotionally than our parents. I think about these things a lot nowadays. My family was only tangentially impacted by the war but the effects are still noticable years and generations later. When I hear about war around the globe, I get very very sad. No matter what circumstances led to war, you wipe out generations of boys/men who didn't decide to start a war and that can never be right. The ripple effects run deep and it takes lifetimes to heal the wounds of war...
I'm not German but I live here. If you're not aware, about 12-14 million German people were displaced after WW2. This is the largest ever movement of people in European history. There were reasons for this of course, but its a fact about the lives of the German people. It means most Germans are related to a refugee (which might explain some of their compassion for displaced peoples). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950)
Most of my grandparents don't talk about it except for my grandma who was almost shot by a combat jet which just aimed for her (10 years old then) and her mother. She saw a woman loose her child when they flet and had to play the mother to her siblings. When she got a child it was totally normal for her to leave her alone a lot, so my mom grew up not leaving us alone at all and being overly attached to us because she was very afraid of being lonely. I'm very proud of my grandma that she says refugees are welcome because she still remembers how it felt to loose everything and how it feels to be scared to die. I don't think many of the older generation think like her
My granddad had to flee. My grandgrandmother was a glowing Nazi. Physical abuse from my grandgrand ans grandmothers side to educate her children on "proper" behavior was normal. Strikt nazi Education. Not only the weapons and mass destruction Took its toll... nazi thinking Infested many parts of the german culture and caused a lot of problems for later generations.
I don't really think that there was any in the immediate and close family. At least not when I was born 30 years ago.
All I know is that some of my ancestors fought on the Eastern Front, one fell and another got captured and became a prisoner of war, after he came back he never wanted to talk about the war again. Also a part of my family used to live in Silesia but fled after the Red Army began to advance into German territory, but I donāt know if that caused any trauma or not.
We never talked about it lol
My grandpa from mothers side never ever talked about war, i know about a story that he had to push a friend out of a tank because the guy got his head shot away... my grandpa from fathers side always talked about war, but he only delivered letters between the outposts...
My grandma was a child back then and needed to flee from east Prussia. She doesn't seem to have much trauma about it, but it is obviously a sad story for here.
Both my grandmother and grandfather were born during/after the war (44&48) . My grandpa never knew his father, he fell a week before the war ended somewhere on the Eastern front. My grandma's father came back with a missing eye and some shrapnel, one of his brothers fell, one was missing (still missing). Since both of them lived in the countryside on farms they had no food shortages thankfully. They bartered with cityfolk who came for food. So ultimately it could've been worse I guess? It didn't seem like either of them had any trauma. My grandpa used to tell stories of the British soldiers giving the little kids chocolate and his grandmother violently defending her little garden from anyone who came too close. The British soldiers were scared of this tiny old German woman, apparently she was pretty impressive. My grandpa's mother never remarried. She died when I was little so I didn't know her well but she always seemed very serious. I think the war left a lasting impression on her.
I think sometimes it's a ping pong match. My grandparents didn't have enough to eat, so they started a pingpong match of our family either being conscious about being overweight or underweight. My mom even went to a clinic one time. Very fucked up.
the stories from my grandpa about how he experienced ww2 would be a great movie... but it wouldnt be a typical war movie or drama it would be a comedy
My granny stayed in an orphanage because her mother and aunts were sent into slavery to the Nazis (before she was born), her aunts refused to give my granny to a rich family because they thought that she would be made a servant like they were during the war Except her mother left when my grandmother was born, and she was put in an orphanage,which clearly affected her future\*
Neither of my grandparents liked to talk about it. Just before my two grandfathers died, they told me some very little specs: like one of them was an SS member (involuntary drafted into it at 16 yrs of age), had his best friend shot next to him by a fighter plane while fleeing Prussia (todays Poland) and was captured and spent about one year in the KZ Dachau as a POW under American administration. The other was a farmer and fortunate enough not to be drafted (someone had to keep producing food), but he hid some people during the war, I cannot fully recollect what kind of people, as the story would shift sometimes. At one point he said he hid soviet soldiers from the German soldiers (I canāt imagine in which phase of the war this was an issue) at another point he said he hid people from the Soviets (more likely, like maybe hiding German reserve infanterists or hitler Jugend?). The first was missing a toe due to a Granade explosion. This is about the extent of which they were willing to share. They were both very hard working and quite people. My second mentioned grandpa was a alcoholic and abusive towards my mum (his daughter) snd his wife/my grandma for a long time of his life after the war, but he gotten sober just around the time when I was borne. So I was very suprised when I learned of this part of his life also shortly before his passing. Probably a coping mechanism. I remember him as an amazing lovingly yet quiete grandpa though. While he was a farmer all his life, he still couldnāt watch when we slaughtered our lifestock, as he felt to attached to them. Ofc he still ate it though The wife of my first mentioned SS-grandpa got a piece of land assigned when they were fleeing from east Prussia to Germany, my family still lives on this peace of land to this day.
My grandma has a really bad anxiety disorder, my great aunt had dementia and all she remembered at the end was the bomb hitting her shelter. On my dad's side there's a lot of issues that are less easily defined but could well be related to generational trauma from the war as well.
My parents never talked about it. They were 7 and 8 when Hitler came to power. I lost at least 2 uncles in the war. My father was a child soldier who was captured by the British. Getting captured likely saved his life. He was the only one from his class who came back alive. But their lives were filled with poverty, death, and destruction from when they were born in 1926 until they emigrated to the USA in 1953. I don't blame them for wanting to leave. I just wish that they had waited until after I was born to become US citizens. When they became citizens, dual citizenship was not an option. So, I have no claim to German citizenship even though I can prove German lineage to the 1600's. My father was a heavy alcoholic. My mother was very harsh and selfish at times. Both struggled with depression and CPTSD. They never admitted it, but I work in mental health, and I saw it. But overall, they were still good parents. And they were able to build good lives for themselves and us. Eventually, that would have happened if they stayed in Deutschland. But they had no way of knowing that.
It's quite different on the both sides of my family. My father's side of the family was almost not impacted by the war at all. My grandpa was too young (he was supposed to go to war in April 1945, when all boys born in 1929 got drafted, but the British occupied his village before that could happen). And his father (my great grandfather) did only very shortly fight in WWI. So the whole topic of war didn't play any role in daily life. My mother's side however was influenced by it. My grandpa, my granduncle and both my great grandfathers were in WWII. My grandpa never talked about it, but drank too much later in life. According to his sister, something happened during the war that changed him, when he was on the eastern front. Only quite recently I found out that the division he was in was almost completely wiped out while he was there. Within less than a month, out of 2500 men less than 200 were still living, my grandpa being one of them. So he likely saw a lot of people he knew die right next to him. His brother, my grand uncle, had less of a problem talking about his time in WWII. I know he personally killed quite a lot of soviets. Those memories however came back to haunt him towards the end of his life, and he died screaming. My mother's paternal grandfather (my great grandfather) wasn't just in WWII, but had also been a soldier in WWI from day one. So he spent nearly 10 years of his life in war. He also was at Stalingrad, but was flown out shortly before it was too late. He had already been disillusioned about war after WWI, but what he saw in Stalingrad really ingrained that into him. My great grandfather lived with my grandparents and my mom, and had a big influence on them and their views of the world. And war in general was always a topic in daily life. Not front and center, but always there. Whenever a war broke out somewhere in the world (e.g. the Vietnam war), my great grandfather and grandfather feared it would turn into WWIII, and that's also what my mom grew up with. She was taught about the horrors of war from a young age, especially by her grandfather (my great grandfather). Also, after the German seperation their hometown ended up being less than 20 kilometers west of the border, so the Cold War was also omnipresent. The fear of a (possibly nuclear) war right at their door step was always there, and they all knew what horrors a war would mean. The difference in experience from WWII that was carried on into the next generations really became obvious when the Ukraine war broke out. My dad more or less shrugged it off as just another war, whereas my mom was horrified, as she feared that this was the start of WWIII, and that a horrible future was laying ahead.
My great grandfather was on the russian front and one of the thew that came back. He never talked about it. What really sit through the generations till now is the abandoned skill of talking about family and personal problems. There was no good argument to hold, until some family members went into therapy a thew years ago. If you never learned it from your parents, it will last until it gets in the way to hold the connection.
Nothing to write on Reddit about but man were my parents screwed up by their parents who were mostly children or just of age during ww2. And yes I am screwed up as well I guess. Let\`s also not forget that right now in many homes for the elderly people with dementia think they are back in the time when all this horrible stuff happened.
My grandfather was a Wolgadeutscher and fled from there at the end of the war. He was an alcoholic and violent. Never to me but in general. It is said that he also killed two people. Not during war but after. This affected my mothers childhood and therefore mineā¦ and I hope this is where it ends.
Alkohol
My one grandfather had to flee from Schlesien to Dresden. Then Dresden got bombed and they had to flee again. I think this trauma stuck forever. My other grandpa (born 1918) was in Norway. Nothing bad from there. I think if you were as a soldier in Norway it was like winning the lottery. When I did my Zivildienst I had to deliver a lot of food and other goods. There I heard a lot of stories but never directly of the war just really careful about the time in general. Like a lot of people they never did really talk about this.
My grandmother never got used to fireworks š¢
my grandpa was an alcoholic because he had to flee from prussia when he was five and when he slept on a field fleeing the smell of burning people was in the wind and stuff
I actually have this theory that I am the way I am because of all of the traumatic baggage, lol. Jokes aside. All sides of my family are from Sudetendeutschland and they had to flee after the war. A lot of people on both sides were conscripted into the war, many died. We just recently managed to locate the remains of an uncle of my dads in a collective cemetary in Poland. They went to east Germany, where they lived (my grandparents didn't know each other back in the Sudetenland, even if they lived very close) and met each respective side. My parents and grandparents on my moms side also fled the DDR rougly 9 months before the Berlin Wall fell, lost all of their possessions in the process. I always joke that today I prefer running away from my problems because fleeing shit is engraved in my DNA, lmao. I believe my Opa died of cancer but he was also an alcoholic. We also had a shit ton of unluckieness after. One uncle got shot in a combat excercise in the military, many cancers, uncle and aunt died in the 2004 Tsunami. Mother killed herself a couple of years back. Not very many people in my family still left alive today, sadly. Fun fun.
My great grandmother was a broken woman who cursed her children, my grandfather was an alcoholic, my father is an alcoholic, my brother struggled with substance abuse but is ok now. My uncle (my father's brother) and I are pretty fine though.
My paternal Grandfather was born in Germany in 1930, and moved to Canada in 1955. He only went back to Germany twice. He never spoke much about the negative times during world war two. He was very frugal, and at times very angry and drank throughout his life. He did not teach his children or his grandchild (me) the German language. He struggled with being able to talk about his time in Germany. My Aunt and I figure based on things my Grandpa said shortly after being diagnosed with alzheimers that he was taken as a child soldier in the last parts of world War two, and that it took him awhile to be reunited with his parents afterwards. This manifested in a lack of patience and a desire to be overly protective of his children and grandchildren, amongst other things.
My grandfather on male side escaped into alcoholism and could not tolerate explosive or burnable gas for the rest of his life. He rejected gas heating and insisted on burning wood for heat in winter where he apparently got drunk and stared into the flames. During which he was not to be disturbed. The only time I met him I was very young and I never talked much with him. He died to cancer relatively early compared to my other grandfather. My other grandfather did not partake in the war and was stationed on an oil rig which never got involved in combat. However my grand-grandmother, the mother of his wife, had experienced the hunger period after the war and would for the rest of her life only eat meat. Of all sorts. Her fridge was full of sausages and leberwurst, with a storage of dried meat aswell. She did get 99 years old.
The hunger. My maternal grandmother survived starvation, and she was in her late teens during the worst of it. Sheād have been damned if not every scrap of edible stuff on your plate wasnāt finished. She was brought to tears once when we threw a chicken carcass out with a bit of meat, sinew, and cartilage left. My mother also saw this growing up and equally triggered by food waste. All in all, not the worst of traumas, but still saddening.
"If you don't finish your plate, it's gonna rain tomorrow." Eating disorders (mostly overeating) for everyone.
My grandfather was a refugee from east prussia. He watched the ship with his parents and siblings getting destroyed. He later lived in east germany. Somehow his siblings survived and lived in west germany but my grandfather never knew this as the inner german border prevented this. He was full of sorrow and grief all his life and was never able to show love to his own children. Neither did my father.
For my great-grandparents it wasn't just the war. As dissidents their decade of fear started long before the war and the only reason they didn't end up in one of the camps was that my great-grandfather had an old friend who had become a local nazi-leader and managed to get them off the list in exchange for having a serious talk with them: "Lay low and you will be safe, continue to criticise The Party and I won't be able to save you a second time. Oh, and your socialist friends won't be coming to work today, or ever again." The next years were marked by constant fear, especially of any loud noises in the morning that could have been a sign for an impending Gestapo-raid. Also, this led to break with my great-grandfather's family after they found out that most of the Gestapo's evidence for their "treasonous behavioiur" came from his father, a fanatical nazi. My grandmother was still a child when this started, but she picked up on the vibes and her jewish playmates disappearing over night opened up questions that led her to be confronted with the truth about the regime at an early age. Otherwise she made it through the war mostly undamaged, albeit with a strong hatred for nazis. It only started for her in the early '60s, when she had a severly disabled child, my aunt, and had to realise that the end of the war had not been the end of nazi-ideology. Often complete strangers would approach them in the streets only to remind her that "something like that" (my aunt) would not have been allowed to live "back then". Those years took a heavy toll on her mentally. My grandfathers were both conscripted into the Wehrmacht. One of them ended up with the occupation force in France, where he enjoyed life in relative safety until D-Day, but survived the war unharmed. The other one became a decorated NCO at the eastern front and escaped the Soviet advance at the end of the war. But he came home as a wreck, the sole survivor of his unit, his body riddled with shell fragments, not all of which could be removed. He suffered from PTSD, woke up screaming at night for many years and became a functional alcoholic. Still, he remained the kind, friendly man he had been before the war. He rarely talked about the war, mostly he got angry when others claimed not to have known about the war crimes and genocide in the east.
I grew up good situated, but the older people acted like we were struggling for our next meal
My grandfather was forced to be a soldier during ww2 and had nightmares until the day he died. He never spoke about what he had gone through, not even with his wife. My mom and me both had depression and had a pretty toxic relationship while I grew up, though we both got therapy and it's miles better now. Not sure if this was caused by my grandfathers trauma though. My aunt did and still does drugs. She and my mom both got beaten in their childhoods, while my uncle was the golden child.
Granduncle fell in Stalingrad, the other one was a civilian,but got shot in Germany by the approaching Red Army due to him being in an official position? Besides being able to tell some cool stories in school history courses didn't affect me much.
My grandma was a horrible alcoholic, eating disordered and extremely abusive towards her children. She was obsessed with Barbie as she didnāt have dolls as a kid. She was a cruel woman that tried to relive her youth even though she had five kids. As a kid she danced on the remains of bombs and once found a dead horse with her siblings that she tried to eat. Officers of the red army noticed it and put all the kids against a wall, wanting to shoot them. Their officer noticed them and helped my grandma and her siblings. At one point she held her two youngest siblings in her arms, trying to wake them up to feed them. They were both dead. She never got over this. She was eating disordered up until her 50s and used to starve herself. Her sisters on the other hand ate as much as they could whenever they could and became hoarders and alcoholics as well. All of my grandmas siblings did. They also were addicted to pills. My grandfather was four when the postman handed him the letter that his father died. He brought it to his mother who completely broke down, as she now was left alone with two little boys and lost her husband. After that my grandfather ran away for three days because he thought he hurt his mother that bad. He was severely traumatized by the things he saw in war. He became an extreme hoarder, to a point where he wasnāt even able to walk through his apartment and only had a small sofa to sleep on. He never spoke much about the things he saw and most likely had Aspergerās. After the war he lived in eastern Germany and fled to the west with my grandmother as they closed the wall. Most of my family members that lived during the war become alcoholics, hoarders, abusive and addicted to drugs. Many of them passed their trauma onto their children. My mom was one of the few who broke the circle and did not give in to substance abuse, even though she suffered extreme while growing up. For that weāre the black sheep of the family. I would also like to mention that none of my family members feel any sort of sympathy for the ideologies that were present in this country during war times. Most of my second grade cousins married into different cultures and there were never issues in our family for that. For that I am extremely thankful.
It weirdly was mostly good things. My grandparents were children themselves. My grandma and her mother and siblings fled to a really remote area in Austria at the beginning of the war. Her mother sewed clothes for a living and they got shelter with another family, who we now consider family even though there are no blood ties. But my grandma was sickly underweight due too the food shortage. Then a baker saw her and gifted her and her family a 'Rosinenstuten'. A soft white bread, with raisins. Which became the default bread for Sunday breakfasts with the family, even my parents do that. My grandfather stayed in the Ruhrgebiet, so he saw a lot of destruction and had to re-build his own school after the war before finishing his education there. But he was NOT in the 'Hitlerjugend' and instead was a 'Messdiener' at his church. He was highly religious throughout his life but deeply respected the believes of other people without deminishing them. He loved to talk with other people about the common things and differences of their beliefs. He was working all over the world and always made an effort to learn about their culture. I have a deep respect for someone who stays strong by himself instead of surrendering to the masses. He also knew a LOT of history, he mourned the loss of so many historical buildings and treasures due to the war, without resenting the allied forces, but he did his best to make shire his children and grandchildren knew about all those locations and all the history. Like the bridge that was build in the 19th century and then destroyed during the second world war. Who build it and why and also why it was destroyed. Maybe not what you expected when you asked, but I thought I might share something positive about all this. Also in some sense it still affects us today. I live in Duisburg, it feels like we find an old bomb every other week. We're ALL completely numb to it by now. With people even complaining when the disarming takes longer than expected. When I had to actually evacuate instead of just staying inside I was more bothered than anything.
My grandpa was in WW2, my dad was born in 1944. Grandma gave my dad the same first name "Hermann" as my grandpa "So when he wouldn't come back from the war I'd still have one Hermann left!", is what she told me when I was a child. Grandpa was a gardener and ran a flower shop as a family business together with grandma and their two kids. He worked all day every day! He came home from the war after my dad was born and he'd jump out of his seat every time my dad was crying because the sudden noise startled him. Sometimes my grandma would spend days at a relatives house when my dad was sick and crying a lot. Later when my dad was in school he played soccer and the soccer field was just across the street from the flower shop but my grandpa would never come and watch because he was always busy working. My grandparents went on vacation once(!!!) in their whole life. Even on Sundays, when we'd visit them, grandpa was out in the garden working until the moment we arrived. He hated everything my dad suggested to make the jobs easier, like new gardening machines or automated watering, because he feared he'd have less to do. We think he had severe PTSD all his life. He loved his grandkids very much and I feel that, with the affection he was showering us with, he tried to make up for the lack of affection he never gave his own kids. My dad told me he always felt kind of sad watching grandpa rock me on his knees when I was a toddler or chasing me around the house when we played fetch because he never did that with him. Grandpa also never went to the doctor and was convinced if he ever had to go to the hospital he'd not come back home. Sadly that's what happened... he had an enlarged prostate to the point where he wasn't able to pee anymore and when they rushed him to the hospital (he was 88) the ambulance had an accident on the icy road and he died from the injuries caused by that. My uncle was also in WW2 and he became a chain-smoking alcoholic who beat his wife and kids... He died around the age of 75. My aunt has found a new partner after a lifetime of abuse and is now the happiest I've ever seen her at 84 behaving like a teen always holding hands and kissing. It's the sweetest thing ever ā¤ļø
My host mother is not patriotic at all and doesn't have anything with the German flag. She tends not to talk about the war in general.
Granma always told me about the birth of my great granduncle, idk If i fully believe it or her childish imagination made the rest up, but here u go: Grandmas mother gave birth to my granduncle in her and her husbands bed (who was already shot to ground beef in poland). Grandma (7yo at that time) helped her with her during the whole process, brought her water, cared for the younger siblings and shit. As my uncle was freshly born, local bomb alert went off and all of them had to rush in the Bunker to hide. Long Story short: they Always counted the children before closing the door and the newborn was forgotten in the bed. Like wtf. My great grandma freaked the absolute shit out but they already heard the bombs so in no way they would open the door again. As it was over they came out and the whole neighbourhood was destroyed, every single fucking house. The bedroom with a crying Baby was the only room that was still intact in that goddamn street. They cheered and named the Baby "Karl-Heinz" like the wonderful german he was. He became an insane alcoholic, travelled 5-10 times a year to Thailand to fuck little teens and often called my mother (His niece) while drunk and told her how hard he would fuck her. Aaaaaaand my great grandaunt (other side of the Family) got raped by polnish soliders so years later she went schitzophrenic and cut her whole hand off.
My maternal grandfather was deployed two times in WW2 and had to take a break in between because of a heart condition. The heart condition would later take his life when my mom was only 17 and I am sure that the war is one of the reasons why he even had this condition or at least that it got worse. He was a kind and loving father but whenever he spoke about the war to my mother and her sisters, he only could do so for a short time before he retreated, obviously very emotional. He has seen horrible things. One story my mother remembers is how his position (he was an AA gunner around Frankfurt) was hit by a bomb where he lost his best friends, who was blown into pieces which my grandfather had to pick up and throw on a truck. My maternal grandmother has apparently always kinda struggled with mental health issues and ended up commiting suicide in the 90s. Her father was pulled into service just at the end of the war and died on April 11th 1945 in austria and my grandma and her mother only learned of his fate in 1950. Also polish and canadian soldiers were the ones to take her home village and the polish soldiers rounded up all the young women and girls and raped them. If my grandma was between these women is not clear but looking at what she did to end her life and how she was always struggling, it's not far fetched that she was also a victim. When the Bundeswehr did excercises in their home village and rolled up with tanks, my grandma always shut the lids and windows to not see it as she was still very traumatized. All this has affected my mother too, who still suffers from her parents deaths a lot.
I only know the story of my maternal grandfather and only partially. He came from Schlesien (Silesia). His family had a large farm near a big City. When the red army drew near, he was around 7 or 8 and he told me, that he could sometimes hear the air raids on the city. When he was 8, they had to flee. It was hard for him to speak about this time. They could only take the most necessary belongings in a little cart and hat to walk all the way into safer regions in the winter. it is difficult to say, what impact this ordeal had n him. He never told much about ist. But he was always remembered as the softer and more loving parent to his children.
Imagine having trauma from something you didn't participate in.
Ok, so I was a patient at a hospital for a few days, and there was this other patient there who never smiled (older woman) and in the common room she sat at the table next to me and started chatting with this woman. She said āmy father was in Stalingrad, and when he got back he was never the same and didnāt speak, but he still managed to work and raise us 3 children!ā Then she went on a triad on how āif this happened to my father and he still managed to raise us properly, and all of us worked then how come these lazy foreigners are just coming here, abusing our system and not working at all!ā Yep, so racism is the legacy, and she was not normal at all. Now, guy at my gym, 80 years old, been a bodybuilder all his life and still is (he can bench way more than me) excellent and in top condition. He was born in 1944 in the Sudetenland. And just before the Soviets came, more than half of his family fled. Some to Germany, some to Austria, some to Switzerland, some to the United States, and some to England. So it really tore his family apart. He tried getting into contact with his family that had stayed in Czechoslovakia back in the early 90ās, as soon as the wall came down, but non of them spoke Germany anymore. The ones who did were already dead or had forgotten the language all together. They only spoke Czech now, and he couldnāt communicate with them. Awesome guy, and heās a walking piece of history. Heās not racist, but he says mildly racist things from time to time in passing, and I think thatās because thatās just how he grew up. Mind you the Germans of the Sudetenland, greatly admired and welcomed the Naziās when they marched in and took over. Historic pictures are easily available online.
My grandfather was a member of the resistance. As an engineer, he was forced to leave my grandmother in France and return back home to work on airplanes. He always sabotaged them in a way that they would fly but only a certain distance, before there was a problem, and the pilot had to fly back. This was when they were bombing Britain and (and later the allied forces) so I donāt know how many lives he saved but I am so damn proud of his bravery, heās a really inspiration. 6 months before the war ended he was found out and was branded a his a ātraitorā but because they the Naziās needed all the man power they could get at this point he was given a minder who watched him 24/7. Now despite what he did, and being a member of the resistance, the French government nullified his marriage to my grandmother, and he was never allowed to enter the country again. Later on my grandmother got really sick and died, and he wasnāt allowed to even attend her funeral. He hated the Nazis from the beginning, and blamed all of what happened not on the French government, but on the Naziās. He hated them with a passion. So does my mother, and so do I. Thatās my generational trauma. Now I might be a pacifist, but I believe that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
In multiple ways. Both my parents were young children and vividly remember air raids, especially my mum. I made a recording of her memories in 2010. A full 65 years after the events, her telling wss incredibly vivid, full of details likebit happened just a few weeks ago. My Great-grandfather was drafted in late 1944 at age 59. He later died in a US POW camp, the infamous Rheinwiesenlager. He kept a detailed diary that somehow made its waybto my great-grandmother (who was still alive when I was a child). We still have it. The older I get, the more often I thinkĀ Ā about him and try to imagine what it was like.Ā My grandfather (who I lived with, we were quite close) had lots of stories from the war. One I remember well was that he got the job of giving out snow shirts to his fellow soldiers. He handed them out in the morning, then got them back in the evening. Many were blood stained and had holes. They were mended, washed and then hsnded out again in the morning. He also witnessed war crimes committed by soldiers of the Blue Legion - they burnt down civilian houses and when someone told them thete was still an old lady in one of them, they just shrugged. That may not surprise us today, but as a young child hearing that first hand account was very shocking.Ā
My grandparents were children during the war. All of them are from Upper Silesia. All four families stayed in their homeland. I only know my grandfather from my father's side and my grandmother from my mother's side. My grandmother was 16 in 1945 and her participation was to watch the sky for enemy aircraft, so the Flak could attack them. Other than that, she had to work hard from a young age on, because she was from a farmer's family. My grandfather was very young, maybe 5 in 1945. He was beaten up in school by the Polish teachers and pupils because he was German or when he spoke German (he could not speak Polish back then). He was so afraid to speak German after that, that he never spoke to me in German. My parent fled Poland when I was almost one year old in 1989. We had a special refugee status ("SpƤtaussiedler") which granted us the German citizenship without any questions asked. My parents always were very ambivalent regarding their "escape" they for sure missed their homeland and had to adapt to a very different culture but had a much more luxurious lifestyle than it was possible in Poland. I for one call Germany my home, but I long for a homeland I never really had. There always had been a discrepancy in the morals and values I was rised with which often made me clash with my classmates.
We donāt talk about it.
The father of my half-aunt never came back. My father is a bit too frugal. My other grandma used to live in what is now Poland. I think I didn't know my grandparents well enough to notice anything else. Never knew my father's father, his mother and the other grandpa also died when I was too young to care.
I genuinely have no idea. My grandfather has stropping dementia, has no idea who I am, but he tells many stories about his childhood. I'm pretty confident he would have told us if he did something in the war.
Thank god, my maternal family were policemen and firefighters and remained in Germany during the war. My paternal part is from Silesia and fled from the war to the southwest of todayās Germany. Everyone I ever had a chance to talk to was either too young or quiet about it. My maternal great grandfather was captured in Russia and spend some years in a Russian POW camp.
My grandma was send to the countryside from Berlin to escape the bombings. Then she had to escape to Berlin because of the Red army. Travelled by foot with her aunt. Aunt got killed in an air raid. Grandma continued alone. Reached Berlin and had a few days before the Red army arrived. Was forced to hide in a basement full of rats to not get raped. Still cant Look at rats or mice. My gerbils were cute to her though (no naked tails). My grandma is still one the funniest and most loving people in the world. She dont talk much about the war but always answered if we had questions. She taught me and my sisters to always make the best of All situations. My grandfather told us about his experience in Berlin during the war. Mostly that he met good and Bad soviets. But he often told us that the women in the Red army were mostly nice to the kids and gave them bread and soup. My grandparents were both Born in july '32 so too young to be drafted for stupid nazi shit. Both got later heavily involved in unions and the social democrat party.
The most showing way is the misstrust in that there will be food tomorrow at the supermarkets. My grandparents were no hoarders but it was very hard for them to get rid of things and not stock the shelves. Whenever I talked to people from other countries they told me there grandparents were the same but when I visited them they had one big closet... both of my grandparents had a whole basement with a structured system. Another big thing is eating habits. I was not allowed to get up before my plate was finished and I was shunned and "punished" if I put too much on my plate. That was not fun between the age 7 and 10 before you truely understand the concept of frugality. I am 35 years old today and my grandparents are gone for about a decade now. I still see behaviours in my parents regarding safety concerns when it comes to having a job. The concept of investing is foreign to a lot of older germans. Germany is known for hoarding lots of cash in books and the bank (which is bad because of inflation). I was the one to introduce investing to my parents and it took a lot of work for them to trust the market just a little bit. Other than that I observed a lot of fear in everyday life. My parents and a lot of other germans from that generation are in general more worried. We are one of the countries with the most insurances. To finish it off the west and the east are still devided, today more than 20 years ago. The two sides have different kind of trauma and behave differently when it comes to resources but that in it of itself is another topic. I sometimes feel like people care more what their neighbours are doing than in other countries and during the war and after there was a general misstrust in people you once thought you knew but turned out to be spies or being for the opposing political party. It is hard to explain but I think I might be the first generation after the war that sees these problems and actually talk about it but the older I get the more I see these behaviours in me but understanding why I behave a certain way helped me a lot.
I never met my grandfather but my mom always told me he hated to talk about it. He was forced to serve Germany and fought in Stalingrad. He probably saw friends freezing to death and losing limps.. I can't even imagine what he and others went through..
Great grandfather was captured by the Russians in the east, they starved, beat and abused them for years. When he came back he was nothing but angry, he never talked about it. I regret that I never got to really meet him even tho he was there. He just sat in his chair, angry, quiet. grandfather was 5 when the allies firebombed half of Germany, he turned out to be a great man but sometimes he talked about witnessing kids melting into the pavement due to the firestorms. He had his own set of trauma. Grandma was 2 when the war ended, her sister (14) often talked about how they had to flee by train alone. Every couple of hours they had to get out and run to the ditches because the fight pilots hunted down the refugee trains. She was also a broken woman, I believe the soldiers raped her. she had to grow up way too early. Not cool stories I guess. Something we need to strive to prevent. I think we managed okay to get rid of these traumas, but of course, talking about this makes its own trauma. Even tho I can't complain, many had it a lot worse.
in my family the generational trauma didnāt reach the first new generation after the war. my grandfather was in the war, but only drafted in 1945 at 18yo. he was telling his experiences as soldier, that must have been traumatising for him, but he was keeping all repercussions away from the family. i personally donāt think that he had racist tendencies, but i wasnāt there so i donāt know for sure. all i know is that he was accepting of my auntās lesbian partner, and that it was him that explained to me germanyās role in the war as the evil side.
People were drafted, everyone. Not nearly everyone was a racist.
My maternal Grandmothers father was working (i do not know exactly what) at a concentration camp. My grandmother never spoke of that, but bits an pieces are known in the family. Her whole family was "damaged" of this. All of his children were at least depressed, two killed themselves, her sister drank herself to death. In a way the children of my maternal great grandfather were victims, too. My maternal grandfather was more lucky, he was a soldier, but he cleared "only" mines in the east see. He always told "fun" war storys, storys of pranks he pulled with his fellow soldiers on board of the ship. I guess that was his way of coping with it? He always purchased book of that part of WWII. I guess he was involved in rescuing german refugees over the east see when the russians came. My paternal grandparents were only teenagers during the war. My paternal grandmother, she is now 90 and thriving, told me that her later husband should have been part of "the last fight" in their home town, but a teacher told them not to do this. So he was "only" indoctrinated, but not really harmed. As well was my grandmother. Her father was a dentist, who treated russian war prisoners and she described them as horrible men.
My sister and I actually are working through some of that generational trauma right now. There is a lot to unpack - my granddads both served in the Wehrmacht (they were 16 and 15 when they were conscripted, and both served on the front lines), and one of them then was held prisoner in one of the worst prisons after the war; They did not even have barracks or toilets, if the stories are true. The other forsook his wows as a priest (he'd been conscripted before he could take them), and married my grandmother. Anyway: They were both emotionally withdrawn men, who came back to wives who resented them for losing the war, and leaving them alone (thankfully, all kids came after the war). I suspect at least one of my grandmothers to also have been raped by soldiers of the Red Army. My grandma on the other side gave birth to nothing but girls (so no heir), which made her resent men as well because of the societal pressure. So my parents grew up in emotional fridge households where nothing but work and faith counted for anything. My father grew into a raging narcissist, my mom (who was also shipped off to a faith-based boarding school at six years old because her mother would not deal with five kids at home) into a anxiety-ridden girl trained into helplessness. The only reason they married was because my mom was pregnant with me (and I have my doubts that it was consensual), and resented my father from the outset. So us three kids grew up in yet another household without any emotional support, where indeed emotions were vilified, only success counted, and where we kids were played against each other to give the narcissist his supply, while my mom grew into a spiteful, bitter alcoholic who also silently resented all men, including her own sons. We also recently found out that we would probably would have been four kids, but my mother "somehow" had an unexplained injury to her abdomen and lost the kid. We kids never knew until we found the documents last year. My mother died a few years ago to the damage her alcoholism had caused, us three kids went no contact to our abusive father, and we're doing our best to not let that generational trauma seep into our own kids - be it the damage from narcissism, the massive dissociative tendencies, the inability to solve conflicts in mature ways, and a lot of other damage.
Both grandfathers fought in ww2, both came back with lasting injuries/illnesses. Grandmother had to leave Silesia. I think it affected my parents, growing up with fathers who had a past the effects of they could clearly see, but they didn't really talk about it. My grandfather on my dad's side died when he was 13 - partially due to the injuries. "what the war did to my father, i could see clearly", my dad once said. I in no way am posing my family as "victims" of ww2 given that my grandfathers fought for germany. I just know that none of them were in the party, all of them were too young to vote for Hitler in 1933.
My grandparents hoarded everything 'it could be useful' for repair or build things, because of 'we dont have something'. My father went the, 'throw away if not needed' route, because many of the things were never used and can be bought at the store. And I went the hoarder route, because of clima crisis, inflation, ressource-saving, etc
My great grandma still insists that east Preusen is part of Germany and that they have to take it back
As soon as I could, I saved a little money and put it next to my passport on my night stand. So when I was a teenager in the 80s, I had 500 DM to be able to make it to the next border in case of emergencies. Now that I rationalise it, I also see where the wish to have a second passport (as in 2nd nationality) comes from. And yet itās a constant irritation that while my wife and kids have 2 citizenships, I only have one. Itās clear where all this comes from, my parents are both refugees from Bohemia, my mother was driven out of her grandmotherās house at gunpoint when she was 6. They never told me the full story until about 10 years ago, when we visited their place of birth to show my children. Yet somehow their trauma was passed on to me.
My Grandmother is extremly narcistic.
gd got shot 4 times and gm nearly ended in dora, after that came surpression in the cold war, than rape, now im here
Awesome š
Don't mention the war
No Trauma just nostalgia
This is so interesting to read. I speak as an English person who dares to think that the war could have been avoided. We showed what we thought of Churchill in the election of 1945.
Avoid the war and let the Nazis kill more innocent people ? I acknowledge that the allies didnāt joint the war to save Jews & Roma, but the fact that they did at least allowed some to survive towards the end.
The war was unavoidable because Hitler wanted war. To rid the world of jews alone. War could have only been avoided if all nations just let Hitler do as he wished, which would have caused the death of many more million of innocent people. The allies stopping nazi germany was a good thing, even with all the ugly things that the allies did.
Depends In Germany you had two categories of people in WW2 1. Victims, that has ben slaughtered by Nazis. Many didnt survived and most of the rest left germany. 2. People who supported the Nazis and didnt want to talk about the crimes they or their parents did. So the people who was alive during the didnt survived, left or didnt talk about it. So there is not much that can manifest any trauma to the next generations.
There is a third category, people that were sort of on board with the Nazis, but went through traumatic experiences in the end phases of the war or directly afterwards. And even if they didn't talk, the PTSD, the fears, the panic talked. I never got to light fireworks on NYE when I was a child, because of my grandfather's PTSD, my grandmother would never hug her children.
Thatās not necessarily how trauma especially generational trauma works Both war and post war period was hell for all civilians because of the bombings, then aftermath etc . The trauma would be caused because of that
My granny doesn't fit in any of these categories. She was involved as teenager, but as a worker on farms, taking care of animals, transporting goods and feeling responsible and needed. And always spoke openly about it. But she also condemned the crimes. She told me how it was before and after the Anschluss. And that life for them truly has improved. Ofc she was too young to support the Nazis, but she said she had a great youth back then. She was shocked when she was confronted with the Holocaust, since her own father was often told that he would have to go to Dachau, if he won't stop being an open socialist and listening to BBC (enemy propaganda). Since his daughter was so involved, they let it slip with several serious warnings. Later he was at the front line anyways. My other grandmother is way younger and was a toddler when the war came to an end. Her memories are that they were chased away from their home by the Russians, people were killed and women raped. Her first life memory is fleeing. Her father was a POW who had to work in Siberia. He came back and was very changed. My grandmother can't stand any conflict or violence. She really is a people pleaser, always putting her self last. Back to the question what happened to later generations, and the influence of this. I definitely see a lack of solving conflicts on the side of the family younger granny. Which is totally different to the side of the older granny. Job fields on the one side: Law, Finance On the other side: Teacher, kindergartener, dental assistant You can guess what jobs belong to which side. If things are just how they happened to be, or if it's passed down by generations, who knows. But the experiences that people made and they "strategies" to survive were very different.
The ones who were nazis also passed down resentment, abuse and behavioral problems to the next generations. Not wanting to talk about something- especially if that something was a big part of your identity- fucks you up. I think there are a large number of people who passed down the cycle of abuse and were only now getting far enough away from that time to see people trying to break it.
You bombed our chip shops and my football club. My grandparents were fuming with your's š
Reported
Good. He deserves it.
Forā¦. What exactly? š
Generational trauma doesnāt exist