However, unlike my Grandpa, my Dad was a teenager during the war in Europe and his slavic country was occupied by the Germans.
I remember him telling us three stories from that era.
Story 1: Sneaking Out
During the war and occupation my Dad used to sneak out at night to go to his grandma's for treats. One night he got more than he bargained for and it changed his behaviour. He stumbled across a German patrol and hid in a bush. The Germans heard the noise and demanded the password, which my Dad obviously didn't know. The story goes that he stayed still and they moved on. My Dad was lucky because, he said, that the German Soldiers were known to pepper a bush with machine gun fire.
After that close call, my Dad stayed at home at night for the rest of the war.
Story 2: Standing to Fight
Near my Dad's school was a Underground Safe-house. One day, two German soldiers challenged two men on the sidewalk beside my teenage Dad. The soldiers suspected that the two guys were Jewish and ordered them to drop their pants for confirmation.
My Dad says they grabbed him to use as a human shield. That day those two men died and my Dad lived.
My Dad despised the show Hogan's Heroes because of the way they portrayed the Germans as buffoons. In his opinion, they were anything but that, in his words they were very, very effective. So effective that they managed to not kill the human shield that was my Dad.
Story 3: Escape
After the war, my Dad's country was 'liberated' by communist Russia. It took a few decades but my siblings and I put together the different versions of the story that we remembered and some documentation of my Dad's time in a refugee camp and came out to this 'final' version.
After the 'liberation' parade, one evening my Dad was called to the police station. After some discussion the officer made it clear that they wanted Dad to be an informant. According to one version, they told my Dad that they knew who he was and they would get him.
That night my Dad and a friend of his left without telling their families. The reason was that they couldn't tell what they didn't know.
As a kid I asked my Dad how he got to Canada. After taking a sip of his coffee, holding his cigarette he simply said, "I left with the clothes on my back, a loaf of bread, a salami and my bike". I thought he was joking, but having looked at maps and the refugee documentation that is probably exactly what he did.
That night him and his buddy started a journey to North America. They biked during the day and hid at night. If they saw a car or truck, they ditched their bikes and went to 'work' in the fields. Sometimes they would be 'working' beside the actual farm workers. No one said anything or looked at them, they just kept working as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
This was their life for, I estimate, about a week. Pedalling during the day, hiding at night, until they reached the Russian zone of Austria. At that point they were caught and thrown in a prison with other refugees. The prison was right next to the demarcation line between the Russian and British zones. One version describes my Dad and his friend being held at gun point, but this may be missing the context.
It wasn't long before the Russians started to take out individuals and shooting them.
Across the line a British officer heard the single shots over a couple of days. If there was some "cleanup" of German soldiers, he would have expected a fire fight, not a single shot. It didn't take him long to come to the conclusion that the Russians were executing refugees.
He waited until he saw the Russian officers depart leaving the lower ranks in charge of the prison. The officer boldly crossed the demarcation line and entered the prison. He approached the Russian soldiers and explained that a mistake had been made and that the prison was actually in the British zone and that he was there to take command of the prison and its occupants. The soldiers left him with the refugees. We imagined it was via a significant amount of bravado that he accomplished this feat.
Immediately, he motioned for the refugee's to leave the prison and move across the line. One of the refugee's spoke English as well as my Dad's native language. As he passed the officer he said, "It's a good thing this prison is in the British Zone." The officer looked and him as he waved another refugee by and said, "The hell it is, get moving before they come back".
When the Russians returned the refugees were out of their reach.
As my Dad walked across that line, he walked into 3 months of living in a refugee camp trying to survive by living off of garbage. He once quipped, "The Americans had the best tasting garbage".
After 3 months waiting for a visa to Canada, a Red Cross worker asked if he had any family in Canada? Yes he did, some of his cousins had emigrated years earlier, probably before the war. Within 3 weeks my Dad was on a freighter headed to Canada.
Eventually, he met my Mother, who didn't mind the accent, were married and in due course I was born.
One day, I'll have a look for the records of his arrival in Halifax.
P^3
P.S. The building holding the refugees was described by my Dad as a 'prison' but it could have been a warehouse or some other secure building for holding people.
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