Back in the mid 1990’s when I was going to University, something cool happened one day. It was the usual late winter morning in the café next to the University. All tables were full except one chair at our table; students smoking their time away with coffee, beer, or juice and awaiting their next lecture. At some point I noticed this really old man, who was walking around with a cup of tea in his hand trying to find a place to sit. Since, the only place available was at our table, I called him, and invited him to sit with us. Soon enough we were talking, and after he found out that I was interested in the Second World War, he told me his story.
I am still sorry that I did not have any gadget with me to record it right away. It turned out that he was a student of engineering in Berlin during the war, and some extraordinary things had happened to him while residing in Germany. In August 1943, he went to Munich to visit friends, when time came for him to return back to Berlin, his friends came along to the train station to say a proper good-bye. When the train arrived, they were all speaking and shouting loudly. He got into the train and went to his place. Soon after the train parted, a German army officer showed up and asked him to come along. In the next luxury wagon he was invited to sit and have a coffee with Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, who happened to be traveling in the same train, and the loud shouting in foreign language by his friends at the train station caught his attention. After he realized it was a Bulgarian language they were speaking, he sent his aid to invite the young man for a coffee. It was few days after the death of the Bulgarian King Boris III, so Rommel expressed his condolences, and invited him for coffee. I mean how, many people had the chance to meet with someone who had personally seen and communicated to Rommel! Not that I approve of his competence as a military leader, in fact I do not, but still I think it was quite incredible. I was sitting there in the café listening to the old man in disbelief!
Another interesting point he shared with me was how truly the German people believed in their leader. How they would gather and wait for hours at places where it was rumored he will appear and speak. Also how much they hated the British. He told me how his landlady, who lost 2 of her 3 sons on the front line, and her third son, was handicapped in wheelchair, again due to wounds on the front, had told him that as long as she was sure that the British will fail, she would send her handicapped son to fight again! All of this made me think, that there must have been some viewpoint shared among the German people that it was Britain’s fault for the on-going war and rising death toll, simply because they failed to agree to peace with Germany. It is fascinating to observe the different perspectives of the same events, which people had depending on where they lived, and the nationality they belonged to.
I found it extremely interesting to listen to a man, who was later in his life sent to a concentration camp in Bulgaria, because he had been a student in Berlin. He was very apolitical, which made his story very neutral, even the way he spoke was one of an observer. He spent his life after the concentration camp, working agricultural work in one of the many Kolkhoz farms in Bulgaria, never being allowed to pursue his career as an engineer. I thought this was really a fortunate circumstance for me to meet him by chance and speak to him. Thus, I decided to share this story with you, as I still believe it was very interesting.
0 commenti:
Posta un commento