My Grandfather was a Military Engineer in the Heer. He spent most of the war with Army Group North around Leningrad, and was posted for some time with the Finns.
He survived the Great Retreat, Narva, Courland, and was later captured in the West as a Staff officer in a Volksgrenadier Regiment in the Courland Pocket, from where he was sent to a P.O.W. camp in Maine.
His two brothers (both cobblers) had fled Germany (and the Gestapo) in 1936, and settled with the German Catholic Community in Southeast Indiana. One later served as an Interpreter at the Camp Atterbury POW Camp.
My grandfather met the threshold of having a critical skill, and with family already here, was granted residency in 1946, and immediately brought his wife, and my father here.
He donated his papers to the Smithsonian shortly before he died in 1980, and a bit of personal films were used in the PBS series, “WW2”
Sorry, I meant he was taken in the Colmar Pocket, not Courland...
I had to read the first line twice before it sank in.
Guess I was expecting all the ‘relatives’ to have fought for the Allies. LOL!