What the World Wars Did to My Family

Some of the heartaches and sufferings experienced by his relatives are here related by a young student.

STRANGE THINGS happen during international conflicts, as shown by how the first and second world wars affected my family. Let me tell you first about my great-grandfathers Emil and Max.

Emil was my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. He was the son of German immigrants who lived in a small town in Minnesota in the United States of America. Emil was about 19 years old when he was drafted into the infantry during World War I and sent to fight in France.

My other great-grandfather on my mother’s side was named Max. He lived in Germany in the small village of Einberg. His wife, Mary, had recently died of tuberculosis, and this left Max to care for four little boys, ages ten, eight, six and four. Despite the fact that there was no mother to look after the children, Max was drafted and sent to fight for Germany in France​—the same place that my other great-grandfather, Emil, was fighting for America.

One of Max’s four sons was Rudy, who is my grandfather. When Max left to fight in France, Rudy and his three younger brothers were left pretty much on their own, although some of the neighbors would look after them from time to time. The boys got very hungry, because their father was not there to buy them food, and food was very scarce because of the war. So they learned how to steal food in order to stay alive.

In the meantime, over in France, my great-grandfathers Max and Emil were fighting in the trenches. One of the war weapons at that time was the gas bomb. The men in Emil’s trench were bombed and many died. Emil was taken to a hospital. He recovered, but he suffered aftereffects from that gas all his life and died very young. We still wonder if Emil and Max ever met face to face on that battlefield. Both survived this war that was supposed to end all wars.

Later, Hitler came on the scene in Germany. By this time Max’s four boys had grown up and were of draft age. Three of them were taken into Hitler’s army. But the other one, my grandfather Rudy, had immigrated to America and become a baker. He had settled in the same little town in Minnesota that Emil was from, and he married Emil’s daughter, my granny.

Further Hard Times

It wasn’t long before America and Germany went to war against each other again. This was a hard time for my grandparents. How they hoped and prayed that my grandfather Rudy wouldn’t be drafted and have to go to fight against his own brothers on the other side of the world! As it turned out, the government didn’t draft him, because he was considered necessary as a baker to supply food for the community. But all this time Rudy worried about his brothers in Germany and wondered if they were alive.

When America entered the war, my granny’s brother was 17 and about to be graduated from high school. The day after his graduation he was drafted into the army and sent for military training. Would he also have to fight relatives whom he knew about but had never seen?

What had happened to my grandfather Rudy’s brothers in Germany by this time? One was a prisoner of war in Russia. Another one was in an American prisoner-of-war camp in France. In one camp the prisoners were so underfed that one day when a cat walked past the barbed-wire fence, my great-uncle caught and killed it, skinned it and ate it raw! Toward the end of the war, the third brother was being transported on a military train. It was the very day the armistice was declared. His train was bombed, and he was killed.

Back in the little village of Einberg, where the four brothers had grown up, other serious things were happening. My great-grandfather Max, who had remarried some years earlier, had two more children. Germany was losing the war and the occupation forces were everywhere in the countryside. Since most of the fathers had gone off to fight, there was no one at home to protect the families.

Homes would be broken into. There was stealing, and sometimes the women were raped. If the villagers were warned that the soldiers were coming, they would take their daughters out and hide them in the haystacks in the fields so that they would be safe.

The war ended, but the effects didn’t end with the signing of the peace treaty. My grandfather’s brothers went back home to Einberg, Germany, except for the one that died on the train. Their lives have never been the same. One was in and out of the hospital all his life and died very young. The other brother, Bernhard, recently came from Germany to visit us in California. His son has already been through military training. So have my uncles here in America. Does all of this make sense? Where will it all end?