My Grandmother Hilde

Hilde Lusser, c 1930, 9 years before the start of World War II.

I never met her, but I feel I know her. She died at 41 years old, her neck broken in an instant when a bomb hit the remote farmhouse where she'd taken refuge. Legend has it she was reading poetry by Soren Kierkegaard when she died, trying to keep her spirits up as she parented 5 children alone (her husband working far away on a flying bomb) and waited for the interminable war to be finally over. The end was only seven weeks away but she would not live to see peace.

What choices did women have in World War II Germany? My grandmother did not raise her voice against the Nazis and i understand why: she was hiding a secret that could have gotten her killed if it had come out. But she tried to sheild her children from the hate that had engulfed her beloved country as best she could. Sometimes I wonder what choices I would have made in her situation. Would I have just kept my head down and tried to soldier through or would I have said no when the Hitler Youth came to indoctrinate my children into hate and racism? I am glad this is only an exercise in imagination but I feel for women like my grandmother who had to make impossible choices in that horrible reality.

Kierkegaard wrote, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." I look to my own ancestry to parse the present and plan for the future. Be well everyone.