Sue's hat and other momentos

I was on four continents yesterday. After a Messenger chat with Sessie in Johannesburg, S. Africa, over breakfast, I hosted an extraordinary Zoom meeting for the German conversation group. We had brought treasures along to show to one another, objects we were proud of or which had precious family associations. 15 people took part, signing in from Canada, German, the USA, Mongolia and France. We heard about artifacts from Brazil, Latvia, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Switzerland, China, Britain and the Netherlands: toys kept since people's childhood, heirlooms, ornaments, souvenirs. 

 

 

Later in the day one of the group, Sue, posted my picture of her and her hat on Facebook, saying,

This photo was taken by Alison this morning during our German Conversation Zoom meeting. Today we each presented an object that personally meant something to us. I am wearing a hat made by my great uncle's hat company. Before WW2, he had a store in Hamburg Germany plus one in London and Paris. But he was Jewish, so he lost everything due to the Nazi regime, and fled with his wife to Shanghai China in 1940. He started a hat company there and employed both Chinese and other German Jewish refugees. It was successful. After the war, they moved to South Africa. My mother inherited my great aunt's hat when she died.

I showed the others the homemade paper fan presented to my father by his fellow prisoners in the POW-camp where they were incarcerated from 1941 to 1945 and where they performed The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. All forty men involved signed their names on the fan, listed as Principals, Chorus and Orchestra. My father, who had been the conductor of this "Comic Opera", carried it proudly in his haversack for 1000km on the long and deadly march across Germany at the end of the war. It is a wonder that he and the fan ever survived, but they did; otherwise I wouldn't have been telling the story.

 

This reminded Sarah, a friend who was not at my meeting but saw my post on Facebook, of a possession that dates back to the same war:

I have inherited a Nazi flag, covered in metal badges, ripped from the wall of the officers' mess at Monte Cassini by my grandfather. I've been researching the battle that he was in then, from a little handwritten sketch he drew and the Internet records. It's quite a story, involving German paratroopers, a commanding officer who directed his troops while strapped to the bonnet of his Jeep, having been shot in the leg early on, and some of the nastiest house to house fighting of the war.