Response

The little blog has been my way of putting some of father's story down, admittedly as a way for me to work through my own angst over his death and our complete lack of relationship.

And, the responses have run in the hundreds of emails to me!  The majority are from historical revisionists claiming that the Holocaust never occurred.  The one I would like to have gotten would have been from Martha, outside of Hamburg, my unknown half sister.  Yes, I hope in vain to at least ease lack of memory should she have thought others knew her father and perhaps connect her with father's family in Switzerland.

I find the entire historical revisionist movement disturbing.  First, there is some truth to what they claim.  Yes, 6.5 million Jews did die, however the evidence of their systematic execution is weak.  Much of the photograph material we have of executions were actually Ukrainian peasants - whom had the Germans treated decently would have joined forced against the Russians!  Rather shortsighted there Hitler.  Much of the evidence concerning the Holocaust comes from the Russians and it has been scientifically proven they manufactured evidences for the Nuremberg Trials.  Building were modified at Auschwitz to fit their story line, again proven.  However, there is the question of the 55,000 Hungarian Jews, whose end were documented ad nauseum by the Germans: from their capture through to their execution in Poland a week later.  Every step, every detail, all photographed step by step.

So, a revisionist may argue against all systematic arguments against the Holocaust, but you are stuck with the 55,000 Hungarians.  And if you want to argue that it was an anomaly, fine, but it is still genocide.  You lose.

Okay, so the next series - when I have time - I will be posting is the Holocaust from Germany's own documentation made at the time by the Nazi's.  None of this is from Russian sources, it is all Western German captured paperwork.  Then I will publish the Hungarian photos.

I have also deleted this blog at least four times, this is a memory I do not cherish.  However, again response has been overwhelming to have it restored each time, over 900 this last time!  So what you have read to this point is restoration 4!  For some reason there is a strong interest in stories of the war, from a first person perspective.  Admittedly, I find enjoyment that my father was at the Dresden Firebombing and lived to tell the tale of the US fighters strafing the fleeing civilians.  Why?  Because that story was told at the time and no one believed it then, the pilots all denied it.  And yet, even the Russians filed the same complaint - whose forward observers had been strafed as well!  So, the Russians testified to this, the Germans testified to this, my own father could back it up with the damage down to the family estate outside of Dresden where he had run across a balcony and the terracotta shot up by the fighters as they wheeled around to fly across Dresden again.  And western history says this did not happen.  So whom are you going to believe?  Witnesses?  Victims? Or the pilots whom would have faced charges were it found to be true at the time?  And that is what makes eyewitness accounts so inconvenient - it contradicts the testimony of the victors.

Like the Holocaust, the further we move from that time period, the harder some facts become to be believed, while others completely become reasonable.

In Memory Of

He saw the rise of National Socialism and the fall of the Reich.  He worked on the first atomic bomb and luckily never saw its completion.  He witnessed the evolution of rocketry, from hobby to weapon.  The birth of the jet age fascinated him no end.

He survived the bombing of Dresden and told the politically incorrect truth, that is not a part of our "history".  He saw the mass murder of the scientific laborers by the tens of thousands.  He survived the Russian onslaught against his chosen homeland, at one point, only by playing dead.

He knew starvation as he fled with three others on his team from the Russians and American forces to surrender to the British.  He knew what it was to be a prisoner of war and to be prison labor.  He learned the hard truth of what freedom really meant and at what cost.

Although, as a mathematician he only understood facts and data, and I an artist, we agreed on virtually nothing across our lifetimes, except food.  So different from me, that by second grade I was sure I was adopted!

As I stood at Fort Logan National Cemetery this week, and looked upon that tiny plot of ground, I could not help but think of both the good and bad he had represented.  The beginning and end to so much of history.  And all of the what ifs......

But, he was my father.

Legacy

I was raised in European schools.  They will forever be best remembered for their blatant violence against a young man whom really did not understand what the heck was going on.....  One of the lessons I remember well, because it gave me cause to stop and think, was on the topic of: "what is going to be your LEGACY?".

A legacy?  Why on earth would I even care what people thought of me when I was long dead and gone?  As the years have passed, I have sort of figured out that I might like to be remembered by those I have successfully fathered, those I have discipled, those I have mentored.  Hmmmm.....

By the same token I can remember my father speaking on the topic a legacy, probably as I was trying to figure this whole idea out.  He seemed to think this was important at the time.

Of course, I have been rereading father's enormous highly fictionalized autobiography and the thought keeps coming to my mind, "Why did he write certain stories the way he did?  Why did he ignore certain stories or split others into separate events or even worse, why did he combine stories?"  Yeah, he created quite a work of fiction and I just do not understand.  Some of his stories I had forgotten and others I remembered extremely well - so I know they were wrong.

By the time the tales are over, one is left with the question of LEGACY.

Apparently, he did want to leave one.  But his complete ignoring of any of this children, other than one step-son, makes you wonder.  Even, Sommer, the golden girl - did not get as many mentions as bathroom humor.

A man whom was at the creation of 20th century history, blew off that history so as to be politically correct in the end, and those of his descendants, he left with nothing.

I am not suggesting that you must worry about leaving your descendants anything but you might want to think about it - in terms of history and truth.....

That should be the basis of any of our legacies.

Split

Following that weekend in Munich, father applied for and received a rotation back to the United States.  He never asked any of us our opinions, we would have all voted to stay in Germany!  So, knowing my father this meant there was another agenda running and that weekend in Munich was probably all it took for him to decide to run as far as possible away from Germany permanently.

Mother continued to be her weird self, father was away as much as possible, us kids just went to school and tried to avoid them both.

It was my birthday, 1972, when father had divorce papers served on mother.  His explanation as to why - was to wake her up that she was destroying her marriage.  You see mother had become a Southern Baptist.  She and father fought like cats and dogs over everything!  Food, religion, all aspects of marriage!  And us kids got to hear it all.

It was on my birthday, 1973, when the divorce became final in court.  So two birthdays utterly destroyed and neither of them cared - they just wanted their war to continue at all costs.

Of course, father then started dating the older sister of my girl friend and that made things very awkward!

Shortly after this, I became a Christian, having fallen in with a group of Hutterites.  Father was outraged that any son of his could be so stupid and did not talk to me for the next 32 years!

And so my tale of father now closes.  I know less about his other six marriages or him during this time.