ARCASHA

H E G



Jackboots on Grandma's Grave

January 24, 2002 - 18:08

There�s a pretty ugly secret in the closet of Luvofmylive�s family that really bothers me.

Luvofmylife�s family background is German. That�s not the ugly secret, bye the way.

Her mother was born and raised in Saskatchewan. Her mother�s family arrived from Germany in the late 1800�s and are of good solid agricultural stock. They�re a big family (16 brothers and sisters, I think) and are all good Baptists. The only really shady part of that family is that one of her uncles used to brew whiskey for the Bronfman family during prohibition. They used to run the stuff into Chicago via Moose Jaw.

It�s certain members of Luvofmylife�s father�s side of the family that creeps me out. There�s an underlying bag of puss that no one wants to talk about. However, I did get some of the story from her father before he died about twenty years ago.

Emil (her father) left Germany in the 1920�s when the nazi�s were �recruiting� young Arian men to fight their fight. The way the nazi�s recruited members was to beat the crap out of them till they�d submit. Emil was a Social Democrat, staunchly supported the government of the day and was quite vocal about it. So he got beat up a lot. Finally, he fled the country and made it to Alberta where he learned to bust broncos � training wild horses. Got pretty good at it, apparently. Then he bought a farm in Saskatchewan, met Bertha and got married and had a gaggle of kids. So far so good.

Emil had four brothers and two sisters. Slowly but surely he sponsored them all into Canada. Trouble is, I know that the oldest brother fought for the nazi cause and the oldest sister was clearly a nazi sympathizer. The brother (I forget his name. He died before I�d met Luvofmylife) was apparently a bitter old fart who died alone in a hovel in Chicago. He joined the nazi�s right off the bat and fought to the bitter end - bought the whole line. He was full of hate � especially for Jews. Someday I�ll get into just how vile I think a culture that fosters such hatred is but not now.

I must say that even Emil, who I found was the most enlightened of the bunch, had some pretty unattractive racist tendencies too. Blacks, Jews, Italians�heck, he wasn�t really all that kind to me at first because I have a French name.

I have, however, met Luvofmylife�s aunt and she�s the one that I found the most disturbing. She was one of the sweetest old ladies I�d ever met. She was in her late eighties at the time (this was twenty five years ago) and looked like something out of a fairy tale in her long floral pattern dresses and with her big smile. She walked several miles a day and did that till she died in her mid-nineties. Her home looked like a gingerbread house.

During WW2, she lived on a farm near the present eastern border of Germany. Her husband was in the Luftwaffe. Near the end of the war, her home became the Russian front. Well, needless to say, they were overrun and lost everything. After the war, Emil brought her and her family over to Canada.

The thing is, this sweet, sweet woman never showed any bitterness about that. �War�s War� she�d say. But it was the racism that spewed from her mouth that was so shocking. Her hatred for Jews was almost a mantra. I truly believe she was brainwashed because I could find no reason for it. She didn�t rant or anything. It was just this quiet unreasonable reason she had that scared the shit out of me.

The fact is that that kind of hatred can lie there, like a sleeping virus, and given half the chance or the right conditions, can erupt into the most horrible of horrors.

That�s scary

Arc

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