Heidi’s Home

My father was there so language was no barrier and we traveled with his aunt and uncle who lived in Frankfurt and vacationed in Austria every year, so they were familiar with some smaller venues and sights along the way which was nice. I was mistaken about the pass, but I have always marveled when young folks got a EuRail pass and stayed in hostels to have a great European experience for less money. Your SwissRail pass was great in that it had encompassed various forms of transportation. Traveling in Toronto used to be like that – one fare gave you transfers to all over that City and you really didn’t need a car if you had good connections.

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Yes, it was lucky for us Eileen. Personally guided tour. My father had grown up in Frankfurt, but moved to Canada after WW II. His parents died when he was in his teens so he was close to this aunt and uncle. They spoke no German and neither do I (nor did my mom) so for my mom and me it was all about the scenery (and food). This aunt and uncle were in their late 70s or early 80s at the time. The uncle was retired – his livelihood had been a chef on a long-distance train.

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Yes – it is interesting. He was born in 1926, same as my mom. He met my mom in 1950 and told her he was an orphan. He didn’t talk about the war much Eilene, however he read a lot of books and saw movies about WWII and he built model dioramas about tanks in military settings as a hobby. He was in the German Army and he said he was very young when he began serving. He spoke more about being in the trenches and eating turnips (rutabagas) and potatoes for a steady diet. He told my mom his father died at the beginning of the war – I don’t know if he was a casualty of war. He never talked about his father and his mother died in a mental institution, also during the war and not a casualty of war. According to my father, she had a bad time going through menopause and “went out of her mind.” That’s what he told my mother.

I went to Germany in 1969 with my father. My maternal grandfather died in April 1969 and my grandmother came over to spend the Summer with us. My father had not been there since he left. I was 13 at the time. We went to the same places with the same aunt and uncle in 1969, as when we returned in 1979, that time with my mother. My father had no siblings and the aunt and uncle were the only relatives he had (to my knowledge).

After my father decided to leave my mother (Christmas Day 1983), he left the country and returned to Germany. I think I may have mentioned to you at one time he fled the country as he took money out of joint bank accounts and an annuity fund, claiming hardship and my mom could not sign the paperwork as she was out of the country. He got the money, then left. A friend of mine is very interested in tracing her roots and hired a genealogist in Germany to help her as she does not speak German. He finished the job relatively quickly and she had already paid him through PayPal so she asked me if I wanted to find out about my father. My friend had done my tree on my mom’s side awhile ago. The genealogist was able to track him down and at that time he was still alive and living in a very small town, had remarried (not divorced here though). The genealogist was very nice. He told me that death records appear as a notation on the birth records … not two separate records, a fact you likely know as you are so immersed in tracing your family roots?

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