Ya my story is a bit different, er my families anyway that is we immigrated to America in the 70’s before I was born from western Germany. My father was able to get a job as a mechanical engineer. I know his side of the family well they are good people and where civilians in the war.
My mothers side however they don’t talk about till this day she won’t tell us what my great grandfather did in the war she won’t speak of him so we assume it wasn’t something she is proud of. I have done my own personal investigation as has my siblings but her maiden last name is very common so it’s kind of a dead end. No pictures no nothing, even the net a dead end from everyone other than her mother and father and that’s a dead in as well they won’t talk about it.
Makes me a tad we bit jealous reading some of the great things you guys been posting about your forefathers in the war.
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I was thinking the German personnel records from WWII would be open and available by now.
If that’s the case that may be a good place to look. At the very least you could figure out what units he served in and which front they were deployed to.
It’s worth looking into.
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VE day is bittersweet for many in Western Ukraine. They traded Nazi occupation for Soviet occupation.
Much of western Ukraine was ruled by Austria-Hungary from the 1770’s until the end of World War I.
The video shows a dedication of a new memorial to the Galician SS division in 2016 with a speech from WW2 veteran:
And much of Galicia was part of Poland until taken over by Stalin when Russia and Germany divided Poland.
Yes. Eastern Poland was under Soviet occupation from 1939 until the German invasion in 1941. The Soviet occupation was brutal, especially for ethnic Poles.
I knew a WW2 veteran from Carpathian Mountains in Galicia. He was in the Polish Army in eastern Poland 1939 and spent time in a Soviet POW camp until the Germans arrived in 1941. He escaped from the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a civilian hiding out in the mountains. His wife hid out as well to avoid German forced labor camps.
After the war his commanding officer came to his village and announced that the entire village had to move 600 miles away the East German border region that was recently annexed into Poland. The UPA was fighting a guerrilla war in the mountains. The solution pushed by the Soviets was to remove the entire civilian population from areas where the UPA was operating.
Poland and Ukraine were stuck in the crossfire in WW2. There were no “good guys” to choose from when the choice is between Hitler and Stalin.
Wasn’t this VE-Day? (Or was that VJ-Day?)
VJ day. VE day is a big deal in Russia and some other parts of Europe.
Russia also fought against Japan, but for them it was a separate war that started 90 days after the German surrender.
Soviet and American sailors celebrating Japanese surrender:
We have tried everything they told us at the national archive (Bundesarchiv) that they are too many matches as well as they were significant matches in each military service department as well as many documents were lost after WW2.
Basically unless we take our mother on some show like Jerry Springer or a family member let’s us know more where staring at a wall. My older brother even hired an investigator there that came up with to many matches all where in the NSDAP but can’t 100% match whether they are my mothers grandfather.
That sucks man… it must have been something really traumatic for her not to speak of him at all.
Maybe one day she will change her mind and give y’all the basics at least. Good or bad, it’s something you and your siblings deserve to know.
My maternal grandmother gave me the entire story behind her family line… there were a lot of slave owners on both sides of her ancestry. She and her siblings did exhaustive research on everyone; ended up learning her family has been in what is today the United States since the 1780s.
I’m glad she told me about it. For some reason it felt good knowing.
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