Remember the Miniseries? The first Miniseries was in 1974, QBIIV. The really big one was Alex Haley’s saga “ROOTS”. What affected me the most, however, was the miniseries “The Holocaust”. The website describes it as the “saga of a Jewish family’s struggle to survive the horror of Nazi Germany’s systematic marginalization and extermination of their community”. It ran in 1978 from April 16 to April 19.
I cannot describe to you how moved I was by the subject matter and man’s inhumanity to man. I came home from school a few weeks later after the semester had ended and I couldn’t wait to discuss this at our usual Sunday morning discussion where our family hashed out everything from politics, to religion to family issues and of course club life. And so I brought up the movie, how riveting it was and asked my father if he had watched the series. He replied negatively, not showing much enthusiasm one way or the other. I was appalled that my father had not taken the time and energy to watch this important television event. I proceeded to let him know what I felt and continued without letting him off the hook!
At some time during my relentless inquisition, my father’s face became taut and as white as a sheet. What my father then reminded me, was that he didn’t need to hear about the extermination of a community, when his own community had been exterminated and the grandparents whom he had lived with were in starvation camps themselves.
Well, as OPRAH calls it, I had my “AHA” moment. Although, I always knew that out of seven great grand-parents living in 1944, only one had made it through the hell of the Karlsdorf and Rudolfsgnad starvations camps. The others were all either shot into mass graves or starved.
It is now 2012 and there are no grandparents to ask about anything anymore, and my father passed away in 2001. I know a lot about my family’s history, but my children are at a loss for first hand information.
GET YOUR BEST FRIEND, BEST GRANDCHILD, NIECE OR NEPHEW AND REGISTER TODAY.
The Conference that will take place at the United German Hungarian Club on the 20thand 21stof April will be an opportunity to learn about the expulsion of German communities and their people from the Sudetenland around the periphery of German and Austria as far as Gottschee. You will hear firsthand accounts of persons who were expelled from their community and how they made a new life in the United States and Germany, as well as other subjects about this history.
I assure you that the conference will be well rounded and appealing to a wide audience. I beseech you to take the time to “experience the experience” and join us on April 20 and 21, 2012.
Marlene Fricker
