A thread I probably shouldnt make but will nontheless
I am quite emotional right now.
Just came home from the vredesfeesten(celebration of peace) which the city I call my home(Sint Niklaas) has organised since the end of the second world war(and which since 1947 has involved hot air balloons).
About an hour ago I was hugged by guests of the celebrations, an American/Belgian couple in their early 90s, I was unable to keep my eyes dry as they referred to me as a good kid(I am 43).
Some background, my family came to Belgium in 1974 when I was 3 years old. My dad was an illegal immigrant who got a job here and under then family reunion rules was allowed to bring his family here because he was a registered worker despite entering the country trough illegal means.
we were the only foreigners in a small time farm community called Het Kalf which consisted of one main streat and two side streets with around a hundred families living there. Walnut grove from little village in the prairie if you think about it.
There was one butcher, one baker and one general store, a lil school and a church.
That is where I spend my childhood, a childhood that included getting beat up at school because some Turkish shithead decided to shoot the pope in 81, they were god fearing christian lil white asshole shitheads filled with ignorance, prejudice and outright racism.
I did however have a support group, people who helped me become the person I am today and two of the most important ones were my two neighbours.
I am not sure if I am allowed to call the first one by her real name since she still has relatives that are alive today so lets call her Elizabeth.
From the first grade on at lunch time I did not stay at school nor did I go home for lunch, instead I stayed with Elizabeth, she had a big coal stove to heat her home with and cook food on. I went shopping for her, kept the stove going in the winter and helped her out with general tasks.
Elizabeth always wanted to give me money for that, money I was never allowed to accept by my dad since he said: You help those who need it because its the right thing to do, if you do it for financial reward you are not doing what is right. The few times I did accept some pocket money from her I did feel guilty.
During my time with her before she was moved to a home for people who can no longer function on their own(where she would have ended several years prior if it was not for me) she told me stories about the first and second world war;
During the first she was really young so she did not remember that much but her memories of the second one were quite vivid and she reffered to me a friend of hers who had even more stories of that horror.
Her friend met up with me and I was like 11 years old at the time and she started to cassually talk abouth the death camps she had survived and how her first husband was killed there and she now had a double pension because hey the German government was paying her a second pension for the 3 years she was forced to work in a forced labor camp in germany. Oh she weighed 78 pounds when she was rescued by russian forces when the war ended BTW.
The second one I can call by his real name since he has no relatives left. He was the last of his family and sadly his line is now extinct. His name is Frans Thuy and he died in 1984 at the age of 98.
Born in 1886 Frans was married once in 1912 and his wife was killed while pregnant two and a half years later during WW1, frans made wooden shoes. Klompen as they call them. A craftsman till the day he died in 1984. He loved circus shows and since he had no electricity at his place he came and watch it at our place those years we had a TV or at Elizabeths place until she was send to a home.
He and Elizabeth were two people who as a kid made me feel human instead of inferior because I was a sandnigger in a white hegemonic white farmers land.
These people who had witnessed the worst humanity can produce were accepting me and my family while the rest of society chewed us out.
This always remained in my mind growing up and now as I am 43 and I see those last survivors and as they hug me and thank me(which i feel i am not worthy of) I get teary eyed and sad because the pacisifism living in those people who have lived the worst of the worst is dying with them and future generations will make the same mistake their predecessors made becouse their memory is being lost.
