hang on.. will post after I have the rest he will pass.. hard to catch them all before he clears page..
Posted on 07/30/2012 5:46:33 PM PDT by Bikkuri
I have a friend from Holland (Netherlands).. he showed me (never seen before) pictures of his grandfather (that was an SS), BUT he is really reluctant to show them because he doesn't want a bad image on his family (name)..
Nahi, I’d love to see the photos of your grandfather. My father was from Holland. He was born in the small town of Schoondijke, near Groede. My father, his two brothers and my grandparents came to the U.S. in 1912. Schoondijke and the Breskins area were heavily occupied by the Germans in WW2. Allied bombing destroyed most of the town. About the only thing left was the windmill (molen), which was there when my father was a little boy. During WW2, local residents used the mill to hide allied pilots. It’s called the De Hulster Windmill. I traveled to Schoondijke with my oldest son in 2006. I wish we had spent more time there.
There are a lot of history buffs on Free Republic, and we are interested in all aspects of WWII. Please share your family history with us. Take care and thank you.
Did you see post 42 ? I’m still laughing.
Gott im Himmel! Very impressive.
I did. Your friend can make the images available to you and you can post them to Freeper Homer_J_Simpson's daily WWII thread or have Freeper CougarGA7 who is a PhD candidate in history post them and they will be treated with respect as historic items.
I am actually getting a few now... hang on.. I will post as soon as a get a chance.. can’t lose them before he clears..
Not true Bik. When I was a two year old Army brat in the early fifties, my baby sitter was a former Hitler youth girl. She had married a US soldier after the war, and wound up stationed at Fort Ord, California. My mother still speaks fondly of her to this very day.
Once the war was over, it was over. Don't forget that a lot of US servicemen who died fighting Hitler, were first generation German Americans themselves. They went to war to fight an evil, not a people.
(helping you catch up)
These are family photos and this is his grandfather in uniform when he first started. I am sure the other photos will have him in an SS uniform. I hope that he decides to post them. I am proud of my family photos, my father in uniform, and I am sure he is too. These being rare just makes me want to see them more.
Tell your friend not to worry. He holds visual history to be shared from 3/4 of a century ago. I would love to see them. I have a late Uncle who was in the Waffen SS in WWII. He settled in the US and worked the next 40 years for a famous hand made shoe and boot company. (Boots worn by US paratroops) Another uncle was a Lt Commander in the US Navy, and engineer who worked in Pearl, improving torpedo’s. Another was in the US army and involved in securing the Ludendorff Bridge, (bridge at Remagen)over the Rhine. We can choose our friends, not our relatives. It’s all history now.
I hope he will share them..
I have seen them. Tell him THANK YOU. Post 85 offered an excellent suggestion for accomplishing your goal.
Sounds right out of "Soldier of Orange."
(oops, it’s this miscommunication thing)
Tell him I said Thank You.
Thanks, didn’t know about the hidden (white) typeface.
ok, have a few.. told him to post the rest.. he says he has over 700... but let me upload to tinypic so I can post here...
He wants you to come to the chat to share them though, I think I posted the URL earlier..
Yes , there are pictures of him - several in fact - framed , but no longer hanging in one of the downstairs rooms since we bought the house after the passing of both he and my mother-in-law . One I remember was a standard photo , posed in a studio of some sort , and the other one of him on a horse , I think in the Philippines . Sure there are others .
If you did, I missed it.
WWII Spitfire raised from Donegal bog
Because he had crashed in neutral Ireland, he ended up being sent to Curragh Internment Camp in Kildare County, Ireland. The surprising fact is that Allies and Germans were held there. The camp was a cushy place. The guards and both allies and German soldiers were allowed to go to town on a regular basis. I had known of German officers being held in Hershey, Pa., but I had never heard of Allied Forces and Germans sharing the same internment camp. A quote from a BBC article:
"It was an odd existence. The guards had blank rounds in their rifles, visitors were permitted (one officer shipped his wife over), and the internees were allowed to come and go. Fishing excursions, fox hunting, golf and trips to the pub in the town of Naas helped pass the time."
Here's a link to that article:
Needless to say I was flabbergasted, or as the Brits would say: Gobsmacked by all of this.
Wow! He looks young. Do you happen to know where the photo was taken?
My Dad too. If he were alive today he wouldn't be.
I got your sarcasm, and I laughed my ass off. Thanks for making an old lady laugh.
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