Rudy, 1918
By Don
World War I ended with an armistice when the German generals signed the surrender in a railroad car. When Hitler defeated the French during WWII in June 1940, the instruments of surrender of the French and British were signed in the same railroad car in the forest of Compiegne. The 1918 surrender terms were quite harsh and Germany soon floundered into such an inflationary economy that a bushel basket full of German paper money was required to purchase a pair of shoes. I still have a bank note for 1 million Marks from the bank of Berlin dated 1922.
With little hope for the future, Rudy turned his back on his share of the family farm, left home to the chagrin of his parents, worked a double shift in the Ruhr coal mines and made enough money to be an Einwanderer (immigrant) departing from Bremerhaven for New York on the liner Resolute.
He had a bit of a love affair on the ship and was processed through at Ellis Island. Not speaking any English and not finding many German speaking people, he still managed to get from New York to New Jersey in a taxi, with the driver circling the block a few times to pad the fare before getting to brother Ludwig’s house. Welcome to America, the land of the free and those that would take advantage of an immigrant that did not speak English. Reminiscent of any current immigration issues?
He initially worked with brother Ludwig who was a house painter, going to work taking ladders, paint cans and drop cloths on trolley cars. He soon made enough money to start his own business, buy an American car, and learn English at a night school full of diverse dialects. He met my mother at a German-American social club in Newark.
He learned how to fix used cars and later told me what I called Lidke’s Law: “If there is something wrong with an American car, the first place you should look is the last place an American worked.” I passed that wisdom along to anyone who might listen. About ten years later, he bought a two story home in Maplewood, NJ during the Great Depression of 1929 to 1939, managed to father a son in 1933 and drove a painter’s truck that proclaimed "R. Lidke Painting and Decorating since 1927.”
After the start of WWII, many fathers went into the armed forces to fight “Nazis and Japs.” Rudy did not want to fight another war and kept working. I went into his steamer trunk and found his Iron Cross, a medal from WWI that at the time was the German equivalent of a Purple Heart. I wore it to grammar school to show that my father was also a hero. He was very upset that I did that.
My father told me many times that Germans were good people. They were very smart, worked hard, and were very industrious. He told me how friendly they were and how neat and trim the villages, farms, and cities were. Above all, they were polite and orderly.
I still have no idea how he managed his emotions during and after WWII, or what he thought of his son who mentally crucified all Germans. Responding to American war propaganda, I constantly drew pictures of American planes shooting down Nazi planes. As it says in a Broadway musical, ”you’ve got to be carefully taught to hate.” Soon it would be the Koreans and the Vietnamese and the Iraqis and certain Arab tribes and of course, the Russians.
I finally made it to Germany with Doris in 2013, going to a DOD resort in the oh-so quaint village of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the home of the 1939 Winter Olympics. Germany was everything he said it was and so much more. Doris and I went to the top of the big ski mountain and sat and looked around at the magnificent views. I wanted to look up to my long dead father and say “You were right Dad, I’m sorry.” Doris and I have a photo of us eating Weisswurst and a big pretzel mit bier at a small mountain inn. I thought of him when, afterwards at home, I titled it “To those who are not here."
A young Russian girl cleans our apartment now and she struggles with English. I smile at her, trying to imagine her circumstances. I remember the three German student aviators who got their wings and stood in formation with me and the others when we got our wings...The band played our national anthem and the German national song. They were three orphans -- no mother, no father, all long dead from the war. I am not ashamed to say, I teared up...Grandpaw