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The German Parents
When I first met Karina’s parents, they were both aged about 37. She originally from a working-class family in the industrial Ruhr region, and he from Mechernich, then a lead-mining town.
His past?
Josef was 18 in November 1941 when he patriotically volunteered to serve in an SS tank regiment, because he viewed the SS as the elite much as I had tried (unsuccessfully) to join the elite Royal Marines for my national service. Initially he saw action on the Eastern Front, was in France in the run up to Germany’s capitulation, spent some time in a field hospital with a leg wound, and was in an Allied prisoner-of-war camp before returning to Mechernich.
He told me that his commanding officer had been a humanitarian Roman Catholic who did not brook atrocities or rape.
He also told me that he had decided not to bring children of his own into such a terrible world, the result I assumed of experiences during the conflict.
Once Josef accepted me as a regular visitor, he arranged for me to sleep in the flat of a friendly elderly couple across the landing. Subsequently I was even allowed a camp bed in their family living room, and, in the night, Karina sneaked into my bed for lovemaking. Eventually I was so accepted that I was allowed to stay in their apartment with Karina while they went away for a few days, and we slightly guiltily slept together in their double bed.
Meeting the family
The ultimate acceptance was when they and Karina took me to Mechernich to meet his mother father and sister, also called Anneliese.
I was received with friendliness and hospitality by the Theis family in their semi-detached house, one of a long row built for employees of the now-defunct lead mine. None of them, including Karina’s mother, Josef and his reserved but likeable sister, spoke or understood English, so I was able to improve my German through speaking to them.
It was clear that Karina was well loved both by Josef’s mother, Oma (Grandma) to her, and his sister. His father, in old-fashioned round, wired spectacles, popped in briefly, and an overalled old aunt from the neighborhood looked shyly pleased to have a bit of the limelight as she helped prepare the meals and delicious German Torte for between meals. (One was expected to remedy the tastelessness of the clear soup that always began their meals with drops from a bottle of Maggi sauce.)
Oma, I found, was a kindly, simple, almost peasant-like, woman-in-a-pinny, want to say dismissively “Ach was!” to any suggestion that things could be different to what she was used to. Which seemed strange considering that she had experienced the historic changes imposed by Nazism and war and its devastating aftermath. She and her daughter always wore protective smocks or overalls indoors on the several occasions I visited.
At one time Josef, wife Anneliese and toddler Karina, had lived with them in the small and crowded house.
Musical Talent
Good-looking Anneliese and multi-instrumentalist Josef, playing concertina, violin, guitar and, I think, drums – met in about 1947 at a dance in Mechernich where he was in a band.
His musical talent stemmed from his father, who was the local violin teacher, and I used to have a photograph of the young Karina and other girls being taught by her step-grandfather.
During my visit he popped in briefly but died soon after.
Incidentally, Josef’s sister told me that she recollected watching, when a youngster, watching flames rising in the distance as Allied aircraft bombed Cologne.
She also said something which showed the extent to which small-town young Germans had been imbued with the idea of the Führer as a benevolent dictator. A kindly, always well-intentioned Roman Catholic, she said to me, tentatively, that she wondered whether perhaps Hitler hadn’t been aware of the atrocities being committed by those around him. I replied that it was clear from the evidence that they were carrying out his own racist, inhumane fascistic ambitions, which they shared.
