The other night I hear tRump telling the audience that we need to round up all foreign nationals (illegal immigrants), claiming that they are bad for our country’s blood. If that is not a huge dog whistle, I don’t know what is. I am sure he was talking to the white supremacist who want to keep the white race clean. The icing on the cake was that he wants to build concentration camps and round up all the illegal aliens and stick them in them. Unbelievable. He proposes the same things that Adolf Hitler proposed and implemented in the mid-1930s and 40s.
Let me remind you, I immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980s around the time that we celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary with my wife who is a (U.S. born) citizen. Being originally from the Netherlands, I was frequently (if not almost daily) reminded of the second world war and the atrocities that happened under the Nazi regime. An uncle of mine died in a concentration camp in Germany, and my father was in an interment camp in the Netherlands waiting to get shipped to Germany. I was raised as, what I have heard described, a second-generation victim, or maybe someone who has second hand PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder). While I do not understand the complete dynamics, my father was very reluctant to talk about what happened to him. If you are a regular reader, you know we had some harrowing experiences in Uganda, and I sometimes feel that my father’s experience was all piled on top of that.
I am somewhat debating whether to retell my father’s Second World War stories or just bitch about the genocide I am recognizing all around me. However, this all brings my childhood back to me and the few stories told by my father. Naturally, my father and the Indian population of the mid 1800s have absolutely nothing in common, but the buffalos got me thinking (I once wrote a post about my crazy brain and thought process <here>).
It seems that my father was on the resistance. At one point he tried to flee the German occupied area and flee to Sweden. I have pictures of Latvia and Finland where he spent a winter. One story was at a soup kitchen in Latvia (I think it was near Riga). He told us that he was sitting across an old man with one of the Jew stars sewed on to his coat. My dad told us that he passed the obviously depressed guy his plate and underneath he passed him his identification card. Now, I ran into my last name online and this was a medical researcher in Latvia. Excitedly I contacted her wondering whether she was related to this older man. “No” she told me, my last name was common in Latvia and translated meant something like young deer. Here I thought my name was French.
Early in 1940 or 41 my father worked in northern France (near the towns of Beauvais and Conchy Les Post), where he was building something on an airport. I have photographs of my 18- or 19-year-old father on a roofing job. He told me that as a young lad he lived in a whorehouse and was well taken care off.
Eventually, he was arrested when he returned from his failed foray to get to Sweden. He was placed in an internment camp in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. He told us that isingle-handedly was involved in sabotage and was singlehandedly responsible for the derailment of a train that carried sand to the camp which was used for the filling of sandbags. He was punished and forced to stand for 48 hours in what was called “the Rose Garden.” The Rose Garden was a small plot surrounded by barbed wire that was guarded by soldiers who had the order to shoot when the prisoner moved. I am still surprised why the Germans did not plainly executed him for his deeds. Later in camp he got typhoid fever and was kept alive by his Russian guard who smuggled opium into his cell to keep him alive.
He was shipped to Germany by train and somehow, he did not end up in a cattle car but in a regular train car. My dad tells me he had a private guard. This guard was overwhelmed by the Dutch resistance and the threw him out of the train. The resistance took him to a nunnery in Belgium where he remained in coma for 10 days (I assume from the typhoid fever). My dad told me numerous times that he saw “the light.” The light that people see at the time of dying.
By the end of the war (1945) he had recovered and briefly joined the Canadian army when they freed the Netherlands. He tells a story where they were in a barn in the eastern part of the country, when a bomb came through the thatched roof and just hung there. He and the Canadians were looking at the bomb just hanging there. Eventually, one of the guys got on a chair and defused the bomb just hanging there in the ceiling.
These are some of the stories I heard at home and my father’s hatred of the German people his age and older. He had sleepless nights when there was a story on TV that dealt with the war. But then there was one TV show he loved and that was Combat. This series detailed the progression of the US army in France after D-day. I cannot check my dad’s stories for their voracity, truth or anything else; however, they have stayed with me for the rest of my life. Well, there things came flooding back to me after the buffalo movie and hearing what our criminal ex-president intents to do if he gets a next term (emulate Hitler).
Let me remind you, I immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980s around the time that we celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary with my wife who is a (U.S. born) citizen. Being originally from the Netherlands, I was frequently (if not almost daily) reminded of the second world war and the atrocities that happened under the Nazi regime. An uncle of mine died in a concentration camp in Germany, and my father was in an interment camp in the Netherlands waiting to get shipped to Germany. I was raised as, what I have heard described, a second-generation victim, or maybe someone who has second hand PSTD (post-traumatic stress disorder). While I do not understand the complete dynamics, my father was very reluctant to talk about what happened to him. If you are a regular reader, you know we had some harrowing experiences in Uganda, and I sometimes feel that my father’s experience was all piled on top of that.
I am somewhat debating whether to retell my father’s Second World War stories or just bitch about the genocide I am recognizing all around me. However, this all brings my childhood back to me and the few stories told by my father. Naturally, my father and the Indian population of the mid 1800s have absolutely nothing in common, but the buffalos got me thinking (I once wrote a post about my crazy brain and thought process <here>).
It seems that my father was on the resistance. At one point he tried to flee the German occupied area and flee to Sweden. I have pictures of Latvia and Finland where he spent a winter. One story was at a soup kitchen in Latvia (I think it was near Riga). He told us that he was sitting across an old man with one of the Jew stars sewed on to his coat. My dad told us that he passed the obviously depressed guy his plate and underneath he passed him his identification card. Now, I ran into my last name online and this was a medical researcher in Latvia. Excitedly I contacted her wondering whether she was related to this older man. “No” she told me, my last name was common in Latvia and translated meant something like young deer. Here I thought my name was French.
Early in 1940 or 41 my father worked in northern France (near the towns of Beauvais and Conchy Les Post), where he was building something on an airport. I have photographs of my 18- or 19-year-old father on a roofing job. He told me that as a young lad he lived in a whorehouse and was well taken care off.
Eventually, he was arrested when he returned from his failed foray to get to Sweden. He was placed in an internment camp in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. He told us that isingle-handedly was involved in sabotage and was singlehandedly responsible for the derailment of a train that carried sand to the camp which was used for the filling of sandbags. He was punished and forced to stand for 48 hours in what was called “the Rose Garden.” The Rose Garden was a small plot surrounded by barbed wire that was guarded by soldiers who had the order to shoot when the prisoner moved. I am still surprised why the Germans did not plainly executed him for his deeds. Later in camp he got typhoid fever and was kept alive by his Russian guard who smuggled opium into his cell to keep him alive.
He was shipped to Germany by train and somehow, he did not end up in a cattle car but in a regular train car. My dad tells me he had a private guard. This guard was overwhelmed by the Dutch resistance and the threw him out of the train. The resistance took him to a nunnery in Belgium where he remained in coma for 10 days (I assume from the typhoid fever). My dad told me numerous times that he saw “the light.” The light that people see at the time of dying.
By the end of the war (1945) he had recovered and briefly joined the Canadian army when they freed the Netherlands. He tells a story where they were in a barn in the eastern part of the country, when a bomb came through the thatched roof and just hung there. He and the Canadians were looking at the bomb just hanging there. Eventually, one of the guys got on a chair and defused the bomb just hanging there in the ceiling.
These are some of the stories I heard at home and my father’s hatred of the German people his age and older. He had sleepless nights when there was a story on TV that dealt with the war. But then there was one TV show he loved and that was Combat. This series detailed the progression of the US army in France after D-day. I cannot check my dad’s stories for their voracity, truth or anything else; however, they have stayed with me for the rest of my life. Well, there things came flooding back to me after the buffalo movie and hearing what our criminal ex-president intents to do if he gets a next term (emulate Hitler).
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| My dad working on a roof in Beauvais, France at what appears to be an airstrip (1942) |
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| My dad is the guy shaving (1941). I think the town is actually called Conchy les Post. I wonder if the ladies in the picture are the prostitutes my dad lived with. |
