Blurry pictures

I am inhaling a book right now by a terrific current German writer, Ulla Hahn, by the title Unscharfe Bilder, translated Blurry Pictures. In the book a grown woman visits her father in the retirement home and forces him to share his experience and involvement during the second world war, something he had never spoken about before, something she is out to know. She is ultimately searching for answers if her dad who was forced to fight under Hitler's regime would have had a choice in the matter and what it was like back than and if he directly contributed to someones misfortune in any way. Its funny or just another life coincidence that I got this book for Christmas since I left my house after the holidays with a stack of old old photographs from family members during the time of the war, yet not knowing still what the book was all about at the time when I found the photographs. I had gone through the box of pictures while at my parents house and got lost once again in a re-occurring question in my own head of what exactly the involvement of my relatives was in the war, if they did bad things, did they kill anyone? I had seen the pictures before of my grandfather proud and handsome, so young in his uniform, standing tall and never smiling with deeply secret eyes, but there were also new images or I was looking at them differently now. I never met my grandfather. He died shortly after coming back from the war on lung cancer, never had smoked a single cigarette in his life. I later had thoughts if he had been in contact with any gases in the war that may have caused the cancer but always kept the thoughts to myself. My grandmother, a post war widow also lost her favorite brother in the war. He was her everything growing up. With two people to mourn over she never talked about the war, never said anything but in her eyes there always remained a touch of sadness that I never forget and I always blamed it on the war. With now all my grandparents dead I have missed my opportunity to ask questions, like the woman in the book. and find out the truth and gain a real pictures of the war from my family perspective. All I have now are the pictures and only this time I am seeing some signs of concerns and possible conflict behind the images. My family is not Jewish, but also were not Nazis or so I think or hoped that there could not just be the one or other. With the grief and loss that the war had caused my family I always thought that would be enough of an explanation and justification that the war is not what my family wanted and therefore they were not on the side of Hitler. And I do know that there was a no choice scenario when both of the man from my family were called to war, to follow one leader, to obey, to execute. And I don't doubt that the consequences to rebel against would have been deadly and I am also considering the power of extremism, brainwash and perhaps that both of these man of my family strongly believed in the good behind the war, the cause behind this one mans vision, much like some people still today belief in the meaning of war. Back to the pictures. My grandfather was a musician and a conductor. The band is all in uniform. Young, handsome men with little narrow, above the lips mustache, just like Hitler's. Truthfully, they all look like him in the photo just because of that very distinct mustache. I wonder if it was fashionable at the time or really such a strong symbol for follow ship or both and if it wasn't for Hitler would we see men with such mustaches on the street today? Only with a full on Charlie Chaplin costume in combination is such manly facial hair appearance today possible. There are no pictures of fights, of dead people, of suffering, of growling, bloody scenes, no Holocaust images like we have seen them from National Geographic published much later. The pictures of my family members are portraits of persona in their best of light for the good memory and in style of posture matching the photographic ability then. I was told that for a long time back then the people of Germany did not know what was happening inside the concentration camps, especially not the ones geographically so far removed like my family in the South and neither did the soldiers at the Front know about the killings of all the Jewish people, not until later. What was distributed on the radio was purely war propaganda, nothing more. I knew that my grandfather and his brother in law were both fighting in Russia and neither of them had anything to do with capturing Jewish people, but they fought in Russia and if they actually were ever confronted with killing someone and what they saw and what they felt and what they went through - I can't even imagine. I never asked were my grandmother's brother died and how. I didn't dare. And then there is one more picture that does not leave my mind, on it my grandfather in pose with two other uniformed soldiers somewhere North/East of Berlin inside a bombed building. The building is completely empty, in the back only ruins what eluted to a former factory type unit. Nothing else, no other people, nothing at all, but three men in front of some ruins, the ground clean and white, covered with snow. And then I see it inside the photo album. In faded pencil my grandfather had written one line next to the photo, which says: And here is where we bombed the Jews. I startled reading the line for the first time, reading it over and over again with a cold shower running down my backside. And what that line really really really means, and what the truth is behind, and the event in detail I will never know, I may not want to know, but have to accept that this is part of my family history, part of what I am carrying within my conscience, part of what all German people still carry within their roots, even today. As I said, I never met my grandfather, but what I heard is that he was a loving father and husband, a kind man to all with an open heart. And on the next page there is another pictures of two homeless Russian children, who my grandfather cared for during his time there and fed and often spoke about as he worried and wondered what had ever happened to them after the war. As always there is always two sides to a story, the narrator and the one who is experiencing the tale in his/her own skin. And with that I am trying to find peace and heal some of my never ending country's grief, while also not wanting to close my eyes to how truly unimaginably horrible it was what happened there and then - to all.