On 14/1/08 10:02, in article ,
"Eddy" wrote:

Sacha wrote:
If you feel you'd like to Eddy, do email me and tell me about your family
and which island they were in - not Alderney, I hope! Remove the 'weeds'
from my address for email.

Thanks, Sacha. That's really kind. The truth is that the whole episode
is riven with pain. My parents went to an extraordinary length to
forget what the internment did to my grandparents & uncle but their
effort at suppression ultimately failed, and tragically. At the same
time, my father who amazingly survived five years flying in Bomber
Command, suffered horrific flashbacks & memories until he died. It's
all awful. I have looked into it all in depth only recently and a
little while ago saw that for my own happiness I needed to put it
largely aside, though never entirely of course.

You could say that this attitude is part of the problem why the young
don't care or know about what happened. Even we, the children, of those
who were directly involved, find it too painful to constantly remember!

Best Wishes,
Eddy.


It sounds truly appalling and I am so sorry to hear that your family
suffered such tragedy. Mine, by comparison, came through it unscathed but
with strong memories of what it was to live under enemy rule and to be cut
off from the mainland in every sense of that phrase. My grandfather, who
was Rector of one of the parishes had one of the illegal wireless sets, so
they got some English news from time to time but of course, lived in fear
always, of being discovered. Unlike many who became very frugal with food,
my mother became a major 'over caterer' and swears it's because of their
near starvation during the Occupation. None of my family was, thank
heaven, interned but one of my mother's friends was the only British
survivor of Belsen and his sister died in Auschwitz. They were sent there
for harbouring a young Russian prisoner of war who had escaped. All this
ended only 60 or so years ago and it slips so quickly from public knowledge
and its dreadful implications are forgotten.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'