Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Peter was a child and thus a victim of the biggest war in the history of mankind and thus, in a very limited way, a survivor of this stupendous saga of world hurt.
It all came at a cost. When Europe was in turmoil and Germany lost this tragic attempt
at world domination there followed untold hardship for Peter and his mother, Wilhelmina. Times
were beyond tough with food nearly scarce. Help was unknown, as Hitler defrocked his entire
society and its wildest dream of victory of all honor and reasonableness in the end. Whatever one can imagine beyond turmoil is what was left of Germany after the war.
Thus, it was "Helmy" was made to enter into a pact with the devil of a man who was fleeing injustice from another country and sucked into the vortex of this war of wars. Stepfathers, American style are in and of themselves troublesome enough but here you had an uneducated simple-minded peasant farmer who had zero education, lived by his wits, what there was of them, and probably was incapable of love as we Americans have come to think of it.
The war did strange things to anyone having lived through it and made some who lived through it better for their experience although woe to Peter and his mother, some were made much worse.
Fedir, the stepfather’s name means “Gift from Above”, and the misnomer would be known as the giant irony of all who came to know him. This man probably never saw a modern toilet before coming to Germany and after fleeing his devastated Ukraine. He certainly never went to any formal school. His was an existence of hand to mouth living in a poor country that both Russia and Germany trudged through for whatever gains they sought at the time.
Mother's exact terms for the marriage, arguably made in hell, were unknown, but loosely amounted to you Fedir, getting the younger good-looking woman in exchange for being reasonable to the two boys Peter and Ingo, the younger brother.
Now what could go wrong with Mother having lived in Hamburg, enjoying clean linen, indoor plumbing, and a high standard of living in a modern society versus the grunting so-called farmer from a country living in near the dark ages conditions but still here we are in the 20th century?
Peter, left for the Navy after having to secure his mother’s permission with written consent. At a tender young age, Pete left the insecurity of his home life in trade for what was probably more certainty in understanding the fairness of a military. At least one knew he’d be treated with a certain dignity befitting one’s rank rather than the total humiliation of the prior conditions under Fedir.
And poor mother, having hoped the pact she was forced to make would turn out better. She died an untimely death having wished herself removed from this earthly disappointment.
Pete’s life was fraught with hardships and at times he, giving due credit, he rose to the occasion making the best that he had to work with and facing it all with an internal silence and unhappiness that comes only from knowing the downside to what this life can bring instead of a bed or roses.
So ultimately it can be said there were no winners in this world calamity Pete came out of but only survivors and he was such.
Rest in peace Peter and know you’re in a better place than that which you started from.
