Tara LaChance<\/p>\n
June 1, 2015<\/p>\n
Memory Essay final draft<\/p>\n
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My father\u2019s parents both died before I was born.\u00a0 My grandfather shot himself when my dad was 11 and my grandmother died of a stroke when my dad was 26.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s parents didn\u2019t have much interest in spending time with or developing a relationship with their grandchildren.\u00a0 They died a few years apart when I was in my 20\u2019s.\u00a0 They said they had raised their children and were done.\u00a0 I have always had a very intense longing to have grandparents who would tell me stories about where they came from and my heritage, to take me places and spend time with me like I saw so many of my friends\u2019 grandparents doing with them.\u00a0 For this reason, I decided that I would seek out a person who I could ask the questions that I would have asked my own grandparents.\u00a0 I really wanted to find someone who emigrated from Italy, since that was where my father\u2019s grandmother came from, and I feel more connected to that side of my family (even though I never met them) than to my mother\u2019s side.\u00a0 But, as fate would have it, I came across a woman who emigrated from Germany, which, by coincidence, is where my mother\u2019s grandmother came from.\u00a0 This is her story.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t seek her out. Instead, she just happened to be sitting at the front desk of a recreation center for senior citizens that a friend took me to one day.\u00a0 I went in with the intention of just asking if they had anyone there who had emigrated from Europe and would be willing to speak to me about it.\u00a0 As I was asking the receptionist at the front desk if she knew anyone who may fit these criteria, there was a woman sitting with her back to me, maybe a foot away and had been talking to the receptionist when I walked in.\u00a0 The receptionist said, \u201cWell, she is from Germany and has a lot of great stories\u201d and pointed to the woman sitting in front of me.\u00a0 The woman slowly turned around and I said, \u201cGreat!\u00a0 Would you be willing to speak to me?\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve come right at lunch time\u201d, she answered, \u201cbut I can talk to you for a few minutes.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go in the back room where it\u2019s quiet.\u201d\u00a0 We walked down a short hallway, in to a room that has five round dining tables with four plastic and metal chairs around each table and sat down near a window.<\/p>\n
I introduced myself and she did the same.\u00a0 Her name is Hermine, and she was born in Berchthegargen, Germany in 1929.\u00a0 She is about 5\u20192\u201d with a round figure and an accent but very adept at the English language.\u00a0 She has short, white hair that comes above her shoulders with loose, sporadic curls, pinned up on both sides with gold barrettes.\u00a0 She wears a gold necklace with a cross, gold hoop earrings and small, frameless glasses, (also with gold accents), and a gold eyeglass chain attached to each side and falling around the back of her neck.\u00a0 Her eyes are blue. You can tell that, in her youth, she was a beautiful woman.<\/p>\n
She comes to this center every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, early in the morning and sets up the exercise room for the group exercise that she participates in.\u00a0 She likes for things to be clean and for everything to be in its right place, she tells me.\u00a0 \u201cI am very particular about things,\u201d she says.\u00a0 We already had something in common, it seems.<\/p>\n
Her parents were Austrian, she makes sure to tell me, but she was raised in Germany.\u00a0 She is kind and open, willing to tell me whatever I want to know.\u00a0 It seems as though she is happy that I am interested in hearing about her life.\u00a0 Although her demeanor is not overly friendly I still feel an instant connection with her.\u00a0 Maybe partly because the great-grandmother on my father\u2019s side that I mentioned I had wanted to interview\u2026her name was Erminia.\u00a0 What a great coincidence!\u00a0 (I don\u2019t believe in coincidences)<\/p>\n
Her mother died when she was 10 years old of ovarian cancer, and Hermine was put in to a foster home.\u00a0 Her two brothers and one sister were put in foster homes a well.\u00a0 She goes on to explain that her father died a couple of years later but she is unsure of how.\u00a0 In the middle of this, she interjects, \u201cAnd then the war happened.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cDo you remember much about the war?\u201d I ask her.\u00a0 \u201cI remember everything\u201d she replies.\u00a0 \u201cWould you mind telling me about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
She begins right away \u201cWe of course had the bombings. \u00a0\u00a0I slept in my clothes for three years straight because you never knew when the bombs would start and you would have to go to the bomb shelters.\u00a0 We had the black-out windows, all the windows blacked out.\u00a0 And then it got to the point where we got bombed every hour, on the hour, at the end of the war, you know.\u00a0 Sometimes we run for the bunker and if it was too late and they closed the bunkers up, then here we are out and the bombs are coming down.\u00a0 Then we hit the ground and as soon as we got, we made a circle and we dashed to the next building which was a school house, down in the basement there during the bombing.\u00a0 Bombing was hell.\u201d\u00a0 Her eyes become red and well up with tears, but she doesn\u2019t allow them to flow out.<\/p>\n
She lived in Munich, on the opposite side of the mountain where Adolf Hitler lived, she tells me matter-of-factly.\u00a0 \u201cWere you afraid of Hitler?\u201d I asked and very quickly she says no.\u00a0 In the same breath she goes on to say, \u201cYou have to belong to his party or you didn\u2019t have a job.\u00a0 People wanted to work.\u00a0 My father and mother, they had four kids, they needed work you know.\u00a0 But uh, I don\u2019t know of anyone that got by not belonging to his group.\u00a0 He held a Christmas party for all of the families with four or more children every year and we all sat at long tables and we each got a gift.\u201d\u00a0 She looked forward to attending that every year, being young and not knowing any better, she explained.<\/p>\n
She saw Hitler in person once as he went through the town in a parade.\u00a0 \u201cWe were all on rations, and the rations were very small.\u201d She doesn\u2019t show any emotional effect when I ask about Hitler, which I find interesting.\u00a0 Also during my questions about Hitler she told me that her blood brothers, who were also sent to foster families when her mother died, both had to go in to the German army during the war. \u00a0I asked if they were forced to go in and her response was, \u201cWell, they were 16 and no parents, what are they gonna do?\u00a0 You join the army.\u201d \u00a0She continues by saying, \u201cOne joined the SS because it paid more but not the kind of SS that was in a concentration camp he was in with a fighting troop.\u00a0 He lost a lot out of his back and he lost a leg. The other brother joined in the fighting because that\u2019s all he wanted to do.\u201d\u00a0 I asked if she ever spoke to her brothers about their experiences in the war, but she ignored the question and moved on to talk about her brothers and their families, so I left it alone.\u00a0 She is the only one left out of her family now.<\/p>\n
Outside of Munich was a concentration camp, she tells me, called Dachau.\u00a0 \u201cDid you know what was happening to people there?\u201d I asked her.\u00a0 \u201cNo, no, no, we didn\u2019t know what happened inside of that until after the war. What the Americans said. But uh, I was supposed to have had an uncle in there but I never did find out who he was or what his name was, I never saw him after the war, so evidently he was one of them that…\u201d She stopped there, right in the middle of that thought. After the war, she goes on to tell me, they went in and saw the \u201cburners\u201d inside of the Dachau where they burned the people. Also a tree that supposedly was used to hang 800 people a day.\u00a0 She says that she saw it and it just \u201cdidn\u2019t make sense\u201d to her because there was not a scratch on that tree.\u00a0 I had never heard of this camp so I Googled it when I returned home that day and found this information[i]<\/a>\u00a0 \u201cDachau Concentration Camp was the first of its kind opened in Germany by the Nazi government in 1933, and it served as a model for later concentration camps. Designed to hold Jews, political prisoners, and other \u2018undesirables,\u2019 the camp is now a memorial to the more than 40,000 people who died and over 200,000 who were imprisoned here during the Nazi regime. The memorial was established in 1965, 20 years after Dachau was liberated by American forces.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls how the school children in her town were given the rations to deliver to families in the area every week. They gave them the addresses and a package of what went to each family. \u00a0She spoke about how sugar was \u201calmost impossible\u201d during those times.\u00a0 She wanted to bake a cake, so she saved up the sugar rations for three months in order to have enough.\u00a0 While she was waiting for the cake to bake, bombs were falling, everything was rattling, but she wanted that cake so badly, she just stood at the oven and waited for it.\u00a0 Her foster parents owned a restaurant so she said that she didn\u2019t feel hungry during the war.\u00a0 They had access to a garden and they were also able to go to other towns to get meat from butchers.\u00a0 Her foster mother was very strict she and the three other children had to sit down right away when coming home from school to do their homework before they could play or do anything else. She describes her foster father as \u201creally a nice guy.\u201d\u00a0 She gets the first smile on her face so far and remembers, \u201cWe used to get into trouble together.\u201d\u00a0 She describes her childhood as \u201cbeautiful\u201d.<\/p>\n One time a plane was shot down in Munich where Hermine lived she was only maybe 11 years old.\u00a0 She and several other children wanted to \u201csee what he looked like\u201d.\u00a0 She thought that the pilot was an American.\u00a0 They began to run towards the plane and they began getting bombed.\u00a0 One of the other kids, a boy, yelled at her to run for her life, in a zig-zag pattern.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t end up seeing the pilot\u2019s face but when I asked if the plane was, in fact, American, she told me it was actually British.<\/p>\n Hermine recalls one time that she saw a dead body in the street.\u00a0 She was about 13 years old and was on her way to the train to go to the next town to get lamb for her foster parents\u2019 restaurant.\u00a0 There was a woman lying dead in the street.\u00a0 She walked right past her, stopping briefly and looking down at her. \u201cBut what could I do?\u00a0 I was just a kid.\u201d\u00a0 She had to keep walking and continue on with what she was doing.\u00a0 \u201cSome nights up to 400 people died in Munich from the bombs,\u201d she says plainly. \u00a0I can\u2019t help but think that this must have affected her on a deep level, but she is very even in her emotions while telling me her stories, almost unfeeling sometimes.<\/p>\n I enjoyed getting the opportunity to meet with Hermine and her openness to speak so candidly with me.\u00a0 After all, I was a complete stranger to her and here she was sharing her life story with me.\u00a0 So didn\u2019t hesitate to tell me very intimate details about her life.\u00a0 There were times when I actually felt uncomfortable with the details but she didn\u2019t seem to mind.\u00a0 Maybe that kind of willingness to share her story comes from the fact that she had a lot of struggle in her youth and she learned to just be open and free with her life.\u00a0 Or possibly it comes from the fact that she grew up really without a tight family unit and like me, she longed to have someone who cared enough to ask.\u00a0 Whatever the reason, I am glad that she is willing to share and I looked forward to our next meeting.<\/p>\n During our second interview together, Hermine carries a women\u2019s magazine in her hand on our way back to the empty lunch room that me meet in.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anything of it until we sit down and she opens it up saying, \u201cI have these papers to show you.\u00a0 I had to hide them in this magazine because the people around here are nosey.\u201d\u00a0 She grins at me like a young girl with a secret.\u00a0 This is the first time that I have seen this side of her.\u00a0 She pulls out several old documents among them are her temporary travel document in lieu of passport form German nationals, a magazine from the Alexander M. Patch ship that she came from Germany to the US on, and her citizenship paper.\u00a0 \u201cI am surprised I still have all of this stuff,\u201d she says to me.\u00a0 My eyes light up and I grab the stack with excitement and begin to inspect each one.\u00a0 \u201cWow, you were really pretty\u201d, I say to her as she smiles and goes on with another story about the war.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was 15, we were in town in a big group and two German officers just came up to me, one on each side, and told me to come with them,\u201d she explains.\u00a0 \u201cThey took me to a nearby building to a second floor apartment and set me on the bed.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know if they were planning on raping me, or killing me, or both.\u00a0 But what could I do?\u00a0 There was one on each side of me, holding my arm.\u00a0 I looked around the room and thought about jumping out of the window as an escape when another officer came in with an interpreter.\u00a0 He wanted to cut a piece of my hair.\u00a0 He said it reminded him of his wife.\u00a0 Of course I agreed.\u00a0 After he cut a lock of my hair, he gave me a 5 pound bag of sugar and some money and told me to go home.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t understand what that was all about but I was happy to not have been harmed.\u201d\u00a0 I sit across from her, riveted by the story that I was sure would have a very bad ending, but thankful that it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 She goes on, \u201cMy foster mother told me that I was seen being taken by two officers and asked me if I had been raped. No, I said, he just wanted a piece of my hair.\u00a0 My mother was so angry.\u00a0 She said that she was going to take me to the doctor and have me examined.\u00a0 I told her to go ahead, because I was still a virgin.\u201d\u00a0 She chuckles, \u201cShe was so angry.\u201d\u00a0 Her 86 year old hands, wrinkled and thin, are fiddling with the magazine that she brought in, smoothing down the middle of the open pages, making a nice crease, throughout her story.\u00a0 Has all this questioning touched a nerve?\u00a0 She seems nervous for a few moments, but continues on anyway.<\/p>\n I ask about her first husband, an American GI that she met in Germany.\u00a0 They dated for two years before they got married, when she was 20.\u00a0 She recalls the day that they went to the courthouse.\u00a0 She clearly recalls, \u201cThey weren\u2019t going to let us get married, because I was 20, not 21, and they needed permission from a parent for that.\u00a0 I had a guardian assigned to me, which I didn\u2019t even know about, who was ill and living in another town about 100 miles away so he couldn\u2019t come and sign papers to allow me to marry.\u00a0 I was so frustrated and angry, sitting there waiting to get permission to marry this man that I was crazy in love with.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why, but they finally decided that since I was only 6 months away from being 21, they would let me choose on my own.\u00a0 They asked me if I wanted to denounce my German citizenship or keep in once I was married to the American.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think that I would ever get divorced, and figured that I would have my US citizenship in two years anyway, so I said that I would give up my citizenship.\u00a0 I left shortly after that to come to America.\u00a0 We took the ship called the Alexander M. Patch, and landed in New York.\u00a0 From the moment I got there, I felt like I had been here all my life.\u00a0 I had never felt out of place, any place that I lived here in America.\u201d<\/p>\n The journey on the ship took them 7 days from Germany to New York.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t have much to say about it but she does offer me a copy of the ships newspaper that she has kept all of these years.\u00a0 The paper is several pages, stapled together, in good shape for being from December of 1949. With only some numbers, presumably written by Hermine, in pencil at the bottom.\u00a0 The newspaper is called The Newspatch<\/u>, (Souvenir Edition) with a rough drawing of a globe with a dotted line from the vicinity of Germany to New York, a drawing of Santa Claus and a ship on the front.\u00a0 It gives information such as the date that they left Bremerhaven and arrived in New York, what was happening on the ship and a log book of the journey which gives the days of travel, how many miles traveled per day, the weather and the position report, to name a few things.\u00a0 It looks like it was typed with a typewriter and has spelling and other errors throughout.\u00a0 The illustrations look like that were done by hand with a pen. Such a great piece of physical history that she has.\u00a0 She allowed me to make copies at the front desk of all of her documents which I greatly appreciated.<\/p>\n Her first marriage only lasted less than 3 years.\u00a0 She became pregnant only one time, when she was 23 and that only lasted three months.\u00a0 She went in to the doctor and they told her that the fetus was growing in her fallopian tube and could kill her if they didn\u2019t do emergency surgery that day.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t seem upset by the fact that she was never a mother, she doesn\u2019t dwell on that subject for more than a few seconds, so we move on.<\/p>\n When Hermine and her new husband arrived in America, things changed and he became \u201ca drunk\u201d and she couldn\u2019t deal with that.\u00a0 Along with her husband\u2019s behavior, they had been sending money back to the states to be put in an account for when they arrived.\u00a0 She remembers asking her new mother-in-law about going to the bank to get some money out and her response was that \u201cthere was no money\u201d.\u00a0 They had spent the money on home repairs before they arrived.\u00a0 Hermine went from being madly in love and a citizen of Germany to the young wife of a GI in America with no family.<\/p>\n When she left him, she was faced with the grim reality that she had renounced her German citizenship, and had not applied for her American citizenship and was, therefore, a citizen of no country. \u00a0I asked her how she was treated by American\u2019s when she got here due to the relationship with Germany and the war.\u00a0 She said she was called a Nazi only once but she didn\u2019t have any problems really.\u00a0 According to her, \u201cI was an attractive young girl.\u00a0 No one really bothered me.\u201d<\/p>\n Hermine had spent her childhood in her foster parents restaurant, so when she needed to go to work here in the states, she naturally went and became a waitress.\u00a0 Her husband wasn\u2019t pulling his weight financially when they were married, so she took it upon herself to get a job and she left him.\u00a0 After her divorce, until 1957, Hermine lived in fear of not belonging to any country and what that might mean for her if anything ever happened.<\/p>\n I left the second interview slightly amazed at how much I have in common with this 86 year old woman.\u00a0 She had two marriages, and two divorces, the same as me.\u00a0 She is very particular and anal retentive, like me.\u00a0 She is a strong independent woman and a hard worker, like me.\u00a0 I kept finding myself saying, \u201cThat\u2019s how I am too.\u201d\u00a0 Have I just met the grandmother I have always longed for?\u00a0 Did I fill in any gap in her life as well?\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 This meeting has really been a true testament that age really doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 That you can be kindred spirits with someone no matter their age, gender or nationality.<\/p>\n She called me and asked me to come visit her at her house, just days after our second meeting, saying that she wants to tell me the story about why it took her so long to get her citizenship.\u00a0 Of course, I went over as soon as I could.\u00a0 I arrived at the trailer park where she lives, not sure of what kind of conditions it would be in.\u00a0 She was standing on her small front porch when I arrived, leaning on the railing and looking over at a nearby tree.\u00a0 She invited me in and as I stepped through the door I saw a bright, open floor plan, and a spotlessly clean home with photos of family on the wall, nice furniture, bright with sunlight.\u00a0 She took me on a short tour of the trailer which was spacious and open, unlike any of the few dark and cramped trailers I had seen in my life until then.\u00a0 Everything had a place, and there was nothing extraneous lying around.\u00a0 I notice a Seattle Seahawks poster on the wall just as she says, \u201cI like to watch football.\u201d\u00a0 Then I walk over to a photo collage of a young, handsome guy.\u00a0 I ask her who he was, \u201cOh, that\u2019s my great-nephew in Germany.\u00a0 He won the gold medal for Germany for the luge during the last Olympics. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t sure who to root for, the US or Germany, but I was happy for him when he won.\u201d<\/p>\n She takes a seat in her single chair and I sat on the modern, firm, heather grey couch and she begins to tell me the reason why it took her so long to get her citizenship.\u00a0 After her divorce, she didn\u2019t have the money that she would have needed to do all of the things that were required of her to apply.\u00a0 She also told me a story about when she went on a weekend trip with one of the other waitresses from her restaurant, her boyfriend and his brother.\u00a0 The brother was playing pinball, which she said she had never played in her life.\u00a0 He won two games in a row, winning $40 each time.\u00a0 Something wasn\u2019t right.\u00a0 It looked as if he was holding something in his hand on the table while he played, so noticed.\u00a0 The owner came out and wanted to watch.\u00a0 The brother said to Hermine, \u201cHere, you play\u201d she played and won!\u00a0 Beginner\u2019s luck she speculated.\u00a0 The owner shrugged and muttered something under his breath and then walked off.\u00a0 \u201cI must have had an angel watching out for me that day.\u00a0 I was so afraid of getting arrested because I saw that he must have been cheating.\u00a0 So, I ran out and walked for a long time, until finally I came to a truck stop.\u00a0 I sat and had a cup of coffee and was crying.\u00a0 They knew I wasn\u2019t a citizen, I was so upset that they put me in danger like that.\u00a0 A truck driver came up to me and asked me why I was crying so I told him my story and that I needed to get back to Philadelphia.\u00a0 He said he was going that way and would take me.\u201d\u00a0 That situation made her feel an urgency to become a citizen.<\/p>\n After that incident she began dating a millionaire.\u00a0 He was a nice guy that she met at her job.\u00a0 After dating him for a while, he gave her the money that she needed to travel to the town she needed to go to take her classes, stay there for 10 days and travel back.\u00a0 It was thanks to him that she became a US citizen on June 20, 1957.\u00a0 She recalls studying the amendments on the way to take the oral exam and again says, \u201cI must have had an angel watching out for me or something because they asked me about the amendment I had just studied.\u201d<\/p>\n Hermine told me that she was married a second time, again for only a years, but she did not give any more information about that marriage.\u00a0 She simply said, \u201cI am a very organized person, I like things to be my way. I guess I am just not easy to live with. Maybe I am too fussy.\u00a0 I figured that if I was going to be with someone who didn\u2019t pull their weight, I may as well be on my own.\u201d\u00a0 She laughed and that was it for that subject.\u00a0 Another thing she and I have in common.<\/p>\n Over the years she was not only a waitress but she was also a hostess in a nightclub and lived in many different states, such as New York, South Carolina and spent 27 years in Oakland, California.\u00a0 When she turned 50 she got a job at a printing company, engraving stationary, where she worked until she was 65.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t offer retirement at that job and only gave three days of sick leave per year.\u00a0 But she remembers that time fondly, working for her friends and enjoying what she did.<\/p>\n She moved up to Washington to be close to her only family here in the states, her niece and her two kids.\u00a0 Although when she speaks about them, so seems disgusted.\u00a0 Telling me that they really only come around to see her when they need money.\u00a0 \u201cMy niece drives past my house every single day to go to work, but she never stops to see me.\u00a0 Even when I ask for her help, she usually says she is too busy.\u00a0 And those kids of hers, they are spoiled and ungrateful.\u201d\u00a0 I feel empathy for her.\u00a0 She is such a sweet lady and has so many great stories to tell.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s interesting,\u201d I tell her, \u201csome people have grandparents and family right here for them to be able to spend time with and they don\u2019t take advantage of that.\u00a0 And then people like me would do anything to have that and I don\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 There is an ease between us while we sit their together and talk openly about her past, her small family now and mine.\u00a0 I feel as though we may be able to fill a void for each other somehow.\u00a0 I make sure to tell her, \u201cIf you ever need anything, please just call me,\u201d maybe too many times during our three meetings, but it\u2019s what I feel like saying to her.<\/p>\n I ask how she likes living where she is now.\u00a0 She says it\u2019s fine and then tells me, \u201cAbout a year ago, I was sleeping on my couch, here in the living room.\u00a0 About 4 in the morning, a huge bang wakes me up and there is a man standing in my living room.\u00a0 He had kicked my door in and had the molding in his hand with nails sticking out.\u00a0 I just laid there, still.\u00a0 He came over to me and put his face about 3 inches away from my face, put his finger up to his mouth and said, \u201cShhh.\u201d I thought, oh God, he is going to hit me with those nails. But he just walked back in to my bedroom.\u00a0 I got up, grabbed my phone and went outside and called 911.\u00a0 I said, there is a man in my house, send the police.\u00a0 They got my address and said, the police are already there.\u00a0 No, I said, I am standing outside and they are not here.\u00a0 Yes, she said again, they are already there.\u00a0 No!\u00a0 The police are not here, send someone now!\u201d\u00a0 I guess the police actually were about five trailers down from me, she said.\u00a0 The man had robbed them and ran and they called the police.\u00a0 The police were out looking for him.\u00a0 \u201cJust then, my neighbor yelled at me and said, \u2018he\u2019s on your roof!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Did they catch him, I ask, rubbing my hands together out of the anxiety that I had hearing her story.\u00a0 \u201cThey found him later, he was on drugs I guess,\u201d she said, rolling her eyes.\u00a0 \u201cIt has been a year of going to court and dealing with this and it cost me $600 to get my door fixed and he never had to pay a penny.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t work, he lives off of the state, and they haven\u2019t made him pay me back.\u00a0 They should make him do community service to earn the money, or go to jail, until he pays for the damage.\u201d\u00a0 I can see that she is angry. Understandably so.<\/p>\n \u201cAren\u2019t you afraid of that happening again?\u00a0 Do you feel safe here?\u201d I asked, very concerned.\u00a0 She shrugs, \u201cI learned from my childhood not to be afraid of everything.\u00a0 You don\u2019t know what\u2019s in other people\u2019s minds.\u00a0 Why worry about it?\u201d\u00a0 I guess after all of the things that she has seen and been through over the past 86 years, she has become desensitized to things like the threat of violence or death. Over the course of three interviews with her, she says several times, \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve had good times and bad times.\u00a0 Whatever is gonna happen, is gonna happen.\u201d\u00a0 Great, yet simple wisdom from a fascinating, lovely lady.<\/p>\n I find it so interesting that she was a part of that time in our history and I wonder how it must feel to be able to look back and say that you lived through all of those things that so many people want to know about now.\u00a0 I also wonder how she feels being from Germany and being associated with Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. I wonder a lot of things still and I hope that over time and the development of a relationship with her, I will be able to ask her more of the questions that I didn\u2019t feel were appropriate so early on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I also hope that this will be a relationship that goes beyond just a few interviews.<\/p>\n I only spent a few hours with her and was gifted with so much rich history, I can only imagine what else I will learn in the span of several more hours, days, weeks, months and years.\u00a0 How many hidden memories will come up through the act of telling me her stories?\u00a0 How many things will come up for her that she may have blocked or pushed out of her consciousness in order to protect her heart?\u00a0 Once the memory has been aroused, what will it offer to the owner of them?\u00a0 And what will that offer to the person on the receiving end of the sharing?\u00a0 I find that I am left with more questions than answers at this point.\u00a0 But without questions there would be no conversation in the first place.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [i]<\/a> www.viator.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tara LaChance June 1, 2015 Memory Essay final draft My father’s parents both died before I was born. My grandfather shot himself when my dad was 11 and my grandmother died of a stroke when my dad… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}