My mom got into making a family tree, and the most interesting thing she found was that the grandfather of my father’s half sister (no blood relation) was executed for the murder of his wife. The wife was the owner of a brothel, and he shot her in the face with a shotgun for some reason.
He was also the last person to be executed in that prison before capital punishment was removed.
My Grandfather was rather consistent and adamant about how he broke ties with his parents at 17. Pretty much up until his last days he said almost nothing about them, and even my parents hadn’t met them. What he did share wasn’t at all nice to hear.
After his passing my aunt (his daughter) dug up everything she could. None of it was good news. Interesting, but maybe that kind of information is better off left in the past.
My point here is that if your family doesn’t have heirlooms, keepsakes, and great stories about great people, there’s probably a reason that isn’t being passed down.
It can be good or bad.
My family has a history of suicide, for instance.
But my sister gifted me an archive of family pictures and papers, and I found a love letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother from his deployment during WWII, and that was kinda cool.
I had an old friend in high school whose ancestors fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. His dad was a big civil war buff, as a result, and even had a shelf decorated in the living room with one half Confederate and the other half Union, and all the old portraits and memorabilia that survived decorating the respective sides. Even had a little picture of Jefferson and Lincoln at the top.
Absent the deeper historical context, it was very cute. Did not bother to ask how many slaves his family had owned.
An ex of mine had their granddad fight for the Nazi’s. It was a pleasure banging her with my brown magnum dong as I looked over at her grandfathers framed picture on her nightstand.
I was told very early in life that my father was an attempted murderer. As time went on, I began to suspect it was more than an attempt. He served his entire 20 year sentence and when he tried to contact us after release. I was denied the opportunity to speak to him. Learned much later afterwards that he remarried, had another family and died without incident st the ripe old age of 77.
My dark family lore on one side is that my grandma and grandpa were distant aunt and nephew. And that all the males on the other side of my family lead a secret double life that’s not so secret. No cover-up murders, just sweet ol’ Alabama & rampant womanizing. 🤷♂️
Very timely considering I finally decided to look up what happened to the Uchiha Clan the other day. Surprisingly masterful storytelling and almost resparked my interest for the entire show.
But also, I don’t know if I can recommit to watching Naruto filler again at the age of 33 lmao (can’t believe it’s been 20 years since it aired…)
Worst part is finding out that someone who was hated didnt deserve any of it and they were right all along.
When I learned that my sweet grandpa being a soldier in the fascist army in ww2 wasn’t the most fucked up bit of our family history, I kind of started wondering if I want to explore it any further.
That can be a complicated thing.
Was he conscripted? Did he actually have fascist politics or was he literally defending his homeland? I’m an American and definitely oppose the fascist turn our politics have taken, but if we were invaded I would feel compelled to defend my city, personally.
Also the grandson of a tail gunner that shot down two planes over Normandy, though in the frenzy of battle my grandfather was only absolutely sure that one of them was a Nazi plane.
Was he conscripted? Did he actually have fascist politics or was he literally defending his homeland?
Tough to say at this point, as I say in the other comment. He was likely conscripted (he was around 18 near the end of the war), but defending his fascist homeland wasn’t the ideal choice, there was a massive antifascist resistance at the time that many had run away to join instead, that was the proper “defend your homeland” movement as far as history is concerned.
For context, we’re from Croatia, i.e. Independent State of Croatia (Nazi puppet state) during 1941-1945, and then a part of socialist(ish) Yugoslavia 1945-1991.
Dang.
I can’t imagine having to make that choice as an 18 year-old kid. That’s huge, heavy stuff.
How does grandpa’s service impact your view of him? I don’t mean that as a “you should hate him”, but rather as a genuine question.
Not too much, in a way. He was around 18 when he was in the army near the end of the war, I don’t know (and there’s likely no way to find out now) how willing he was about being there, how much he believed in the ideology, and how much of a choice he had at all (though it surely wouldn’t have been impossible for him to escape and join the partisan resistance, as many others had done), and either way he went through this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleiburg_repatriations so I count that as atonement for whatever crap he might’ve done.
And, well, half a century later, when I came about, he was effectively a different person. I have my own picture of him from one time period, that picture is already wildly different from the picture his children had/have, and adding what he did before all of us is tough to put together into a single picture, at least for me right now. I mean, purely for myself his most important contributions were sparking my interest in natural sciences, showing me a bit about how computers work back when he was the only family member with a computer at home, providing me with formative books (Don Quijote), and (probably unintentionally) making me turn atheist. His past has to be objectively acknowledged, but it necessarily has a different role in my subjective perception of him.
Damn, that sucks. And it probably isn’t the best that my first thought was the old joke about falling off the guard tower…
My parents were part of an officially recognized “hidden cult” that was technically religious in roots but too decentralized for it to matter.
They are both highschool language arts teachers btw.
(Once you learn the politics and other context it stops sounding as bad thankfully)
“So tell me about our family tree! What’s our herritage? How far back does this family go???”
“Son…your last name is Hitler. I’m sure you figured it out by now.”
“…wait, we’re THAT Hitler family???”
“I see you’ve mastered the art of mental denial.”
If you are interested what really remains of the Hitler family:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/hitlers-descendants
Interesting detail:
Gustav, Ida, and Otto all died in infancy or toddlerhood before Adolf was born in 1889. Edmund, who was born five years after Hitler, died of measles when he was six. Paula was born when Hitler was seven, and she was the only one of his full siblings to survive to adulthood.
Hitler’s childhood was marked by abuse and trauma. Alois was already in his early 50s when Adolf was born, and he had little interest in child-rearing. As Adolf grew older, his relationship with his father became hostile. Alois verbally and physically abused Adolf, and the future Führer began to rebel.
Adolf was deeply affected by the death of his brother Edmund in 1900, and he became emotionally detached. As a teenager, he reportedly bullied his younger sister. As reported by The Guardian in 2005, Paula wrote in her diary when she was eight years old, “Once again I feel my brother’s loose hand across my face.”
Seems like the measle vaccine could have prevented WW II. And now Anti-vaxxers are playing with WW III.
Seems like the measle vaccine could have prevented WW II.
Or human kindness and compassion from his father. It’s funny how many people fantasize about using a time machine to go back and kill baby Hitler in his crib, as though Hitler was uniquely evil from birth like some kind of demon or anti-Christ.
The real story is much more mundane and tragic: a cycle of neglect and violent abuse, leading to a very cynical and maladjusted adult. Much of the rest is cultural and historical.
For sure, but that’s much more complicated and still a problem today. I wanted to highlight what vaccines achieved.
“I thought we were Circleville Hitlers!”
One of my classmates in secondary was related to john wilkes booth, Lincoln’s assasin
i went to college with a descendent of his brother
Pure altruism hasn’t been a meta strategy since we lived in groups of 100.
Fuck that. Min/maxing is dumb and there’s no reason to play other than love of the game/other players.
