Cette Noir, je t'écris
Nov. 10th, 2006 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dcseainmais je ne t'écris pas une poésie ce soir, au lieu de cela, je t'écris ceci:
(Tu ne sus pas que je pourrais écrire dans le français, eh?)
Well, enough of that. At least i know i've not forgotten it all, even if it's really rusty. I should revisit L'étrange or Le Petit Prince for a basic refresher. Tomorrow, or more likely today when you may actually see this, is Armistice Day, known here in The States as Veterans Day. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Germany signed an armistice on the Western Front, ending the war with France, Britain, Belgium, Holland, Spain, the US, Canada, and The Commonwealth.
My great-grandfather fought in that war for Germany, for which he won an Iron Cross. Almost exactly 20 years later, He and his sister left their native Germany for France the week before Kristallnacht. They chose France because they spoke French.
And so it was that he fought for France in the 2nd War, earning La légion d'honneur for that time. His sister had moved to Tel Aviv in 1944; they spoke rarely after that. Partially because the rest of the family died in The Camps, partially because he very much did not believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. He only rarely discussed his life before he moved to North America.
At the end of the Second War, he moved to Montréal so he could learn English - the Jewish community there is Anglophone. By 1949 he'd moved to Cleveland, marrying my mother's father's mother in 1950.
Great-grandma over the years managed to lose the Iron Cross and La légion d'honneur, as well as the menorah he'd carried with him when he left Germany. Other than his bag of clothes, the Iron Cross and the menorah were all he brought with him of his life Before.
He spoke fondly of Before, and sadly of how things changed from 1927 to 1938. He had a degree of shame about fighting for France, for though he knew it was the right thing, he was a German first, a Jew second, very secularized he was. He never spoke German again, aside from his surname, and such German as is part of the odd Yiddish bits that peppered his speech.
He changed his name when he moved here. Friedrich Shönmann became Frederick Shoenmann, part of his putting his Germanness behind him. Kindly and fun as he was, there was always a bit of sadness about him. No regret, just sadness.
Great-grandma outlived him by a decade or so. She had alzheimer's in the end, and at least verbally lived in an infinite loop of about 1922 to about 1937. She didn't seem to remember Uncle Fred, as we all called him. Nor did she know who my sister, my grandfather, or i was. She usually in those last years called me Tommy, thinking me to be my grandfather's brother, who killed himself in 1955, and being confused about how much younger i looked than Don.
The memory of Uncle Fred weighs on me a little bit each Armistice Day; i wish it was still easy to buy poppies like it used to be. This year, with the current administration and the battles over whether people like me are people who deserve full rights or not, his memory and his stories haunt me more than usual this year.
So this year, i fondly, yet a bit melancholically, raise a glass in memory of my great-grandparents Schoenmann.
(Tu ne sus pas que je pourrais écrire dans le français, eh?)
Well, enough of that. At least i know i've not forgotten it all, even if it's really rusty. I should revisit L'étrange or Le Petit Prince for a basic refresher. Tomorrow, or more likely today when you may actually see this, is Armistice Day, known here in The States as Veterans Day. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, Germany signed an armistice on the Western Front, ending the war with France, Britain, Belgium, Holland, Spain, the US, Canada, and The Commonwealth.
My great-grandfather fought in that war for Germany, for which he won an Iron Cross. Almost exactly 20 years later, He and his sister left their native Germany for France the week before Kristallnacht. They chose France because they spoke French.
And so it was that he fought for France in the 2nd War, earning La légion d'honneur for that time. His sister had moved to Tel Aviv in 1944; they spoke rarely after that. Partially because the rest of the family died in The Camps, partially because he very much did not believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. He only rarely discussed his life before he moved to North America.
At the end of the Second War, he moved to Montréal so he could learn English - the Jewish community there is Anglophone. By 1949 he'd moved to Cleveland, marrying my mother's father's mother in 1950.
Great-grandma over the years managed to lose the Iron Cross and La légion d'honneur, as well as the menorah he'd carried with him when he left Germany. Other than his bag of clothes, the Iron Cross and the menorah were all he brought with him of his life Before.
He spoke fondly of Before, and sadly of how things changed from 1927 to 1938. He had a degree of shame about fighting for France, for though he knew it was the right thing, he was a German first, a Jew second, very secularized he was. He never spoke German again, aside from his surname, and such German as is part of the odd Yiddish bits that peppered his speech.
He changed his name when he moved here. Friedrich Shönmann became Frederick Shoenmann, part of his putting his Germanness behind him. Kindly and fun as he was, there was always a bit of sadness about him. No regret, just sadness.
Great-grandma outlived him by a decade or so. She had alzheimer's in the end, and at least verbally lived in an infinite loop of about 1922 to about 1937. She didn't seem to remember Uncle Fred, as we all called him. Nor did she know who my sister, my grandfather, or i was. She usually in those last years called me Tommy, thinking me to be my grandfather's brother, who killed himself in 1955, and being confused about how much younger i looked than Don.
The memory of Uncle Fred weighs on me a little bit each Armistice Day; i wish it was still easy to buy poppies like it used to be. This year, with the current administration and the battles over whether people like me are people who deserve full rights or not, his memory and his stories haunt me more than usual this year.
So this year, i fondly, yet a bit melancholically, raise a glass in memory of my great-grandparents Schoenmann.
