There are family stories told about my grandfather Gorit. I ask his photograph what happened. He smiles and says: 'You want to learn what happened to me?' 'Yes,' I say, 'since I cannot find out myself.'
In the photograph they stand together, my grandmother Charlotte and my grandfather Gorit. Charlotte wears a fur coat, hands in a muff. Gorit wears his Luftwaffe uniform. It is Spring 1944. They both sensed this would be the last time, my sister tells me, looking at the photograph.
The first story is that Gorit, in July 1944, chose to end his own life by running deliberately into the path of the enemy. The second is that he was shot in the back by his own men. The third is that he was killed in the forests near Lublin by Polish partisan fighters.
My grandfather was a Polish partisan fighter, my friend tells me. What happened is so long ago, things are totally different now. He is offering me honey from his kitchen table. Here, have a spoon, he says, it's from a beekeeper I know in Poland. If you want, I can send you his details. From the forest near Lublin. The honey is rich and deeply fragrant.
In any event, while examining Gorit's portrait and thinking about this, I ask him again what happened. He smiles and says: 'You want to learn what happened to me in the forest near Lublin?' He turns away, like someone who wants to be alone with their laughter.
Hidden among old bank statements and other such papers, I find the following:
"Lieutenant Gottfried Lindow was stationed with Staff Unit Light Flak Battalion 995 – Field Number L40279 (German Official Mail, Posen) – on the Eastern Front and has been missing in Lublin, Poland since 24 July 1944."
They both sensed this would be the last time, my mother tells me.
In 1952, there was a knock at my grandmother's door, my mother says, though how she remembers all this I don't know. She would have been 13. Cap in hand, a fellow officer made small talk, she said, offering my grandmother a cigarette, the Hamburg summer heat in the mid-thirties, my mother sitting on the window ledge looking over the city. My grandmother breaking down. She cried so much, she was admitted to hospital, my sister recalls when I phone to ask her.
Yes, yes, my father said, I don't remember now when, he was shot while running through a clearing in the woods, cornered, a desperate suicide, exposing himself to enemy fire.
He was shot in the back by his own men, my father said. I'm not sure which story is true now. This rumour existed in my family as a murmur, now they are half-remembered memories of stories told long ago, not told at all, or I've made them up and forgotten I made them up.
He was an architect and he loved taking photographs, just like you, I think my mother once said, loved taking photographs. One of five brothers, all killed in the war.
When my mother talks about the father she never knew, her eyes mist over. His official Luftwaffe portrait sits on her bureau in her bedroom. Sometimes I find it, face down, in a drawer. Next to it stands another photograph: Gorit and Charlotte in evening wear next to a Christmas tree. Both wear their look of sadness alone.
Lieutenant Gottfried Lindow was stationed with Staff Unit Light Flak Battalion 995 – Field Number L40279 (German Official Mail, Posen) – on the Eastern Front and has been missing in Lublin, Poland since 24 July 1944.
A third photo in my mother's bedroom shows my grandmother. A date stamp reads 1988. She is now 77 years old, younger than my mother is now.
One day I was shown into the small room where my grandmother lay on a table, my mother was standing next to her. My grandmother from another country, whom I only knew through translation. I asked my mother if I could spend some moments with her alone.
He was probably shot by Polish partisans in the forest near Lublin. But I like to think he was shot in the back by his own men, for disobeying orders.
There is only one story to told about Gorit. My grandmother waited seven years before she knew for sure he was dead. When she found out, she had to go to hospital in her grief. And my mother never knew her father.
