Oberstedten, summer 1936 – it’s a cold and rainy day. The olympic games in Berlin are far away. The day before my great grandfather Philipp Becker asked his oldest son Georg, my grandfather for help. He wants to buy a new cider barrel at Mr. Désor’s cider press house.
As they own neither a car nor a pickup Philipp takes an old cart which once belonged to his own grandfather. At his side Ludwig – a funny blond blue eyed boy of 11 years, his youngest son. Ludwig just enjoys the last days of the summer vacations. He is excited and happy to meet his oldest brother Georg who would arrive with little Karl, his 4 year old nephew. Philipp is a proud man, metal worker by trade and captain of the Oberstedten fire brigade. For special occasions he wears the iron cross military decoration he received in WW1. Since then, he hoped for better times to come … and now he believes in the Führer.
Philipp passes away in 1939 just before the disaster. Ludwig, seriously injured in WW2, dies at the age of 23. In 1944 the one and only anglo-american bomb which was dropped on Oberstedten demolished my grandfather Georg’s home. 2 neighbors, Mr Kempf and Mr. Mathay, died in that attack. My grandmother and her 5 kids could escape with a bad fright and found a new home at my widowed Becker great grandmothers house.
At that time my grandfather Georg was a soldier in Russia where he became a prisoner of war. One summer morning in 1946 a woman entered my grandmother Louise Becker’s home – shouting “Look alive – Beeilt Euch – schnell – I just saw your husband not far from the village on a field, he collapsed …„. So my “Oma” and her 5 children hurried as fast as they could. With the old cart they brought their sick and emaciated father back home …
(Karl Georg “Karlo” Müller, August 2016)
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