Schabbach
The People We Remember
Two stories by Peter S. Dubois
At Christmas, the author asks his grandmother and her companion what they remember about the war.
She remembers Jewish friends and neighbours being deported from her village in 1942. He remembers playing cards in Kröv with Baldur von Schirach, the former Hitler Youth leader convicted at Nuremberg for his part in deporting the Jews of Vienna. He remembers him as pleasant company.
The two stories are built from family testimony and historical research, and they take place in kitchens, card games and ordinary village life. They are about what happens to neighbourly loyalty when persecution becomes routine, and about what families keep, soften or leave out when they pass a memory on.
Forthcoming.