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Mark's Letter
From The Story October 31, 2006 The Story is always interested in tales from our listeners. Mark Dessauer wrote to us about his discovery. Mark knew his dad had served in the Hitler Youth. What he didn’t know was that his dad was Jewish.
This story is about how you (or someone else) can define reality. My father was from Germany. He told us he was in the Hitler Youth and served a bit toward the end of the war.
His political sensibilities were rather conservative which of course created two liberal children at odds with their dad. He developed bone marrow cancer and died after fighting it for about four years.
As we prepared for his service in Germany, his only living sibling mentioned that their family was a Mischlung. I knew enough about German history that it meant half-German, half-Jew. We probed a bit more and found out that their father (my grandfather)Â was in fact Jewish and fled Germany for Switzerland right before the war. We were all dumbfounded at this revelation.
I started several years ago trying to find out what happened in the family and what my real roots are. I visited several relatives in Germany and Switzerland last spring and interviewed them about the family history. I found out more that I bargained but not my critical question - who my father was.
--Mark Dessauer Â
