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What Helpers Do You Remember?
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<blockquote data-quote="nerfherder" data-source="post: 590524" data-attributes="member: 15907"><p>This one goes a looong way back. Before I was born. It also comes forward to the modern day. If you get emotional, get your tissues ready. Not exaggerating.</p><p></p><p>Way back during WWII, my mom and aunt were slave labor in a munitions factory. Poland, or Germany, I don't remember which. </p><p></p><p>One distant cousin of theirs (lost his fingernails from working with the gunpowder, they just were burned off from the chemicals I think) ended up working in the kitchen. (My mom's family has a reputation for being very opportunistic - a survival trait that runs strong in Kiddo, go figure.)</p><p></p><p>He would stash the margarine wrappers (butter? Who has butter in a war?) someplace safe, sneak them to my mom and aunt, who rigged up a way over the lone woodstove in the barracks to boil the remaining oil out of them, get some precious extra calories. They lost contact during the war as slave labor was shipped hither and yon, and it was always safest to assume someone was dead - that way you just move on.</p><p></p><p>Years later, and this might be "outing" my family, Mom and my aunt were watching the TV miniseries "Holocaust." During one of the "slideshow" scenes, they saw... the last photo of their mother, moments before she was shot with a bunch of other women and dumped in a ravine in Latvia.</p><p></p><p>They went to the agency in NYC that provided the photos, found the image (how they knew she ended up in Latvia) and the story was reported in our local paper, which made it to the AP wire - and People Magazine sent out a reporter and photographer, did a really gorgeous 3 or 4 page spread on the story. (The "Star" tabloid did one too, and got nearly everything wrong, which cracked us all up.)</p><p></p><p>We got phone calls and letters, some were pretty funny or pathetic of course. A call from the son of her dad's ne'er do well brother who ditched the family and left for NYC so long ago nobody even knew about him, total difficult child type, and great crazy stories from that. Great friends and family came out of that contact.</p><p></p><p>And one phone call from a woman outside a deep south city with that delightful Southern drawl. Well, her dad who died a few years back used to talk about his cousins who died in the war. After a few frantic minutes of playing the Jewish Geography game, hindered by her Classic Southern Pronunciation of unpronounceable Polish towns, it turns out...</p><p></p><p>Her dad was that cousin, the one who helped them. She was his only daughter. And she was named after my mom.</p><p></p><p>When we all met a few months later, lo and behold. She and I shared the same white streak in our hair ('though hers was larger.) She's now the family archivist, and I have Southern Cousins, accents and all. The few summers we spent visiting allowed the "y'all" to creep into my speech, which is a lot of fun to think about.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="nerfherder, post: 590524, member: 15907"] This one goes a looong way back. Before I was born. It also comes forward to the modern day. If you get emotional, get your tissues ready. Not exaggerating. Way back during WWII, my mom and aunt were slave labor in a munitions factory. Poland, or Germany, I don't remember which. One distant cousin of theirs (lost his fingernails from working with the gunpowder, they just were burned off from the chemicals I think) ended up working in the kitchen. (My mom's family has a reputation for being very opportunistic - a survival trait that runs strong in Kiddo, go figure.) He would stash the margarine wrappers (butter? Who has butter in a war?) someplace safe, sneak them to my mom and aunt, who rigged up a way over the lone woodstove in the barracks to boil the remaining oil out of them, get some precious extra calories. They lost contact during the war as slave labor was shipped hither and yon, and it was always safest to assume someone was dead - that way you just move on. Years later, and this might be "outing" my family, Mom and my aunt were watching the TV miniseries "Holocaust." During one of the "slideshow" scenes, they saw... the last photo of their mother, moments before she was shot with a bunch of other women and dumped in a ravine in Latvia. They went to the agency in NYC that provided the photos, found the image (how they knew she ended up in Latvia) and the story was reported in our local paper, which made it to the AP wire - and People Magazine sent out a reporter and photographer, did a really gorgeous 3 or 4 page spread on the story. (The "Star" tabloid did one too, and got nearly everything wrong, which cracked us all up.) We got phone calls and letters, some were pretty funny or pathetic of course. A call from the son of her dad's ne'er do well brother who ditched the family and left for NYC so long ago nobody even knew about him, total difficult child type, and great crazy stories from that. Great friends and family came out of that contact. And one phone call from a woman outside a deep south city with that delightful Southern drawl. Well, her dad who died a few years back used to talk about his cousins who died in the war. After a few frantic minutes of playing the Jewish Geography game, hindered by her Classic Southern Pronunciation of unpronounceable Polish towns, it turns out... Her dad was that cousin, the one who helped them. She was his only daughter. And she was named after my mom. When we all met a few months later, lo and behold. She and I shared the same white streak in our hair ('though hers was larger.) She's now the family archivist, and I have Southern Cousins, accents and all. The few summers we spent visiting allowed the "y'all" to creep into my speech, which is a lot of fun to think about. [/QUOTE]
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