Well, things are finally coming together. I think I’ve handled a lot of the research aspects of the project, but I’m still working on writing everything. Getting in contact with my other family members was the best thing that I ever did for this capstone, because they’ve had so much information that my family didn’t. My one aunt had a whole family tree and timeline of lies, along with additional information. That alone literally saved me a week of writing and information, since now I just have to transfer the family tree to a more readable format, and will just write out the information she included.
Two major things happened in the meantime – the first being that Dachau got back to me. They have no records of my grandfather’s name, though they did say that this didn’t mean that he wasn’t stationed at the camp. After sitting down with my immediate family and messaging another aunt, we came up with a few possible reasons as to why his name isn’t appearing in any records besides Displaced Persons records (DP for short). For starters, it’s possible that my grandfather gave whoever held him a false name. He might have done this because he still had family in ghettos back in Lithuania – not to mention his father (before his assasination years prior) had been a government official. He might have been trying to protect not only himself, but also his family. Another possible reason is that he might not have been held by any major Nazi camp. It’s highly possible that he was in a general forced labor camp, and that I’m looking in the wrong place for possible records of him.
The other major thing that happened was that an amazing employee at Arcadia was able to help me get some family tapes digitized. Two of these tapes were from my father’s family, and the other was my parents’ wedding. I wanted to have all three uploaded so that I could pull footage from both sides of my family to give better context to their lives. While for this project I’m mainly focussing on my father’s side of the family, I also want to include my mother’s family as well. In the future, I do hope to explore her side next, so this is just a little prep for that as well. However, I got a huge surprise from my father’s tapes.
At first, I truly thought that they were both just footage of Lithuania and deceased family members. When I opened the video though of the one labeled as a birthday gift to my father, it opened up with just my grandfather speaking to the camera. At that moment, I couldn’t contain my emotion, and I started bawling. Until that point in time, I had never heard my grandfather’s voice while being able to remember him. He had been so young when I passed, to the point where I only had a vague idea and fuzzy memory/feeling when I thought of him. I had an idea and feeling of what I thought I remembered him sounding like, but I thought I’d never actually get to know or hear him – so when I opened that video, and heard him speak, so much came rushing into my mind. First of course was what I’d mentioned before about hearing him, but second was that the vague and flitting memories I’d had of him weren’t figments of my imagination or ideas formed from what my parents had told me about him. What I had was real memories of him – his voice, his tone, his gentle gaze – everything matched up perfectly to what little I had in my own mind of the man I’d barely met.
Being able to see and hear my grandfather for the first time tangibly was more than I could’ve ever hoped for. My parents hadn’t pulled out the family tapes for so long out of fear of them degrading, so it’s very likely that without this project, I would’ve never have gotten to hear my grandfather’s voice. Regardless of how this all wraps up, I’m more happy than I think I could’ve ever been before all this. When starting my capstone on my familial history, I’d wanted to pursue information and knowledge of my loved ones because I’d felt so disconnected from them. When you grow up with one whole side of your family already deceased and the other being so different from both distance and ideals, you feel so isolated and alone. For so long in my life I’ve felt like I’ve been missing a part of myself, which now in hindsight I think is because I never got to know anything about my family. Since starting this project though, I’ve never felt more loved or connected. It’s like I’ve finally found a part of myself that’s been missing all this time, but that I couldn’t identify. Words can’t even begin to describe how happy I am, and I don’t think they ever could. Outside the point of fulfilling my senior capstone, this project has fixed a hole in my life that I thought would never be filled. Even if this project doesn’t receive the best of scores, I’m glad I did this – not just for myself, but for my family as well. Let’s just hope now that I get everything wrapped up in time for my thesis presentation. I better buckle down and get that all sorted. Welp, since this is my last blog, thank you for reading. I truly appreciate it more than you could know. This is Anna, signing off.