Yesterday was such a sad day, as stories poured out on the radio about the terrible hell hole of Auschwitz. Manufactured industrial killing, I am sure someone said that. When I put up Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', it was a refutation of cruelty that the human race so often takes part in, I was looking at the different faces that took so much joy in the music. We are moved by art, music and architecture and yet that base cruelty of the human race flares up everywhere. We are quick to find fault, to lay a label at someone's feet, and if anything yesterday's ceremony must not become part of history but must always stay there, out of the corner of our eyes we see, we remember the terrible cruelty.
Everyone has a tale to tell, my grandfather was Jewish and English born in the East End, but my upbringing in the Catholic faith is a reminder that he would not acknowledge it. He fled from Belgium where he was working and with his wife Catherine, as the Germans approached. He told the tale of driving the new car with a mattress on the top for protection, and with a little pekinese dog snuggled inside Catherine's fur coat. They managed to get on a boat to England and from there he built his life. I was formally adopted by them, my entrance into the world the result of a 'liaison' of his son, who was in the RAF and a person, my mother, who I have never looked up, for reasons that at the time such a birth made you illegitimate.
Grandfather grew quite wealthy, he was a clever engineer. But my childhood was blighted by such people as I see today, who are quite willing to denigrate a group of people into trash. So I heard, as a child, that such people as myself were born 'no good', parents would never be of 'good stock'. I see people like that today, small minded, ready to judge others badly and no compassion. But I also saw in that video the goodness that is the human spirit, the melding of races.
When I was about 9 years old, Catherine had died not long after coming to England, my grandfather took me back to Brussels to visit a lawyer, and at the time to claim my inheritance. The house in Belgium belonged to Catherine and legally I became her heir. The house had been in the hands of a collaborator at the time and of course the trials and sorting out of properties took time. I remember going to the property, it had a small lake with a boat on it and I am sure the man rowed me around.
Well it is not quite the fairy story ending, I never received my inheritance, it was to go into a small family firm called 'Nicor'* which was run by my natural father.
Great secrecy in my family about my beginnings, it all resided in a black box which was snatched by my father and the fact that I was adopted I only learnt at the age of 27 years old, on the death of my grandfather, and received my adoption papers.
When I saw the film 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and that black monolith turning in space, it reminded me at the time of the black box that held so many secrets in my life. Things never to be known. So history is a teacher of what has happened, what may happen and how we should approach our thinking.
*Nicor means The nicor was a great water-dwelling monster of the dragonish or sea-serpent type. I love that dragons appeared so early in my life.
Found here
Wryd; Last night I woke about 1. 0. clock to a noise, it sounded like the car engine being started. Going to the window I saw two shadowy figures climbing over the church wall. Did I dream it? Nothing has gone, everything is in place. Grabbed a wooden club just to be sure ;)
Great secrecy in my family about my beginnings, it all resided in a black box which was snatched by my father and the fact that I was adopted I only learnt at the age of 27 years old, on the death of my grandfather, and received my adoption papers.
When I saw the film 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and that black monolith turning in space, it reminded me at the time of the black box that held so many secrets in my life. Things never to be known. So history is a teacher of what has happened, what may happen and how we should approach our thinking.
*Nicor means The nicor was a great water-dwelling monster of the dragonish or sea-serpent type. I love that dragons appeared so early in my life.
Found here
Wryd; Last night I woke about 1. 0. clock to a noise, it sounded like the car engine being started. Going to the window I saw two shadowy figures climbing over the church wall. Did I dream it? Nothing has gone, everything is in place. Grabbed a wooden club just to be sure ;)
You had an amazing life with experiences and stories most of us will never know. I'd like to think our world has improved. I guess it has but not enough yet.
ReplyDeleteFor me Rain it seems to be entering a dark phase. The movement to the right in politics, and then the advent of 'Climate Change' Now whether you think it is part of a natural process or man made, the reality is written all around us.
ReplyDeleteThis must be a fascinating story, no doubt painful in places but also very moving, about what you knew when, what you suspected, how people treated you and why, how one grows away from such secrecy and discovery, and its legacies. My wife's family, further back in the nineteenth century but also from the East End, successfully concocted a story about being Welsh and changed their name from Levy to Lewis, and when genealogy uncovered the truth there were still those who would not accept it. Once known, the implications could be seen to go back decades.
ReplyDeleteIt is strange, your story of your family is similar in its need to hide background ancestry. I remember my first Dutch mother-in-law, very regal, flying over from Switzerland to meet the girl/me who would marry her youngest son. She stroked my nose, it doesn't show she said. But my then stepmother, who was trying to break up the forthcoming wedding. Came forth with the fact, no one would ever marry you, if they knew your background. It teaches you that a person can harbour a whole lot of prejudices, hiding behind the mask of the face.
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