[HN Gopher] I found my Grandpa's notes 20 years after he died (2...
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I found my Grandpa's notes 20 years after he died (2020)
Author : Ice_cream_suit
Score : 208 points
Date : 2021-05-04 04:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| ilamont wrote:
| I interviewed Ray Kurzweil not long after "The Singularity Is
| Near" came out. I asked him about a concept that he brought up in
| the book but didn't get much attention in light of the other more
| startling predictions he made. Excerpt follows:
|
| _Q: In the Singularity is Near, you also discussed an intriguing
| invention, which you called the "Document Image and Storage
| Invention", or DAISI for short. But you concluded that it really
| wouldn't work out. Could you talk a little bit about that?
|
| RK: ... The big challenge, which I think is actually important
| almost philosophical challenge -- it might sound like a dull
| issue, like how do you format a database, so you can retrieve
| information, that sounds pretty technical. The real key issue is
| that software formats are constantly changing. People say, "well,
| gee, if we could backup our brains and I talk about how that will
| be feasible some decades from now. Then the digital version of
| you could be immortal, but software doesn't live forever, in fact
| it doesn't live very long at all if you don't care about it if
| you don't continually update it to new formats.
|
| Try going back 20 years to some old formats, some old programming
| language. Try resuscitating some information on some PDP1
| magnetic tapes. I mean even if you could get the hardware to
| work, the software formats are completely alien and [using] a
| different operating system and nobody is there to support these
| formats anymore. And that continues. There is this continual
| change in how that information is formatted. ...
|
| Q: You said there's no technological solution. What about
| creating standards that would be maintained by the community, or
| would be widespread enough that future ...
|
| We do use standard formats, and the standard formats are
| continually changed, and the formats are not always backwards
| compatible. It's a nice goal, but it actually doesn't work. I
| have in fact electronic information that in fact goes back
| through many different computer systems. Some of it now I cannot
| access. In theory I could, or with enough effort, find people to
| decipher it, but it's not readily accessible. The more backwards
| you go, the more of a challenge it becomes.
|
| And despite the goal of maintaining standards, or maintaining
| forward compatibility, or backwards compatibility, it doesn't
| really work out that way. Maybe we will improve that. Hard
| documents are actually the easiest to access. Fairly crude
| technologies like microfilm or microfiche which basically has
| documents are very easy to access.
|
| So ironically, the most primitive formats are the ones that are
| easiest._
|
| As a genealogist, I have thought a lot about solutions to
| preserve data long term that don't have physical limitations of
| microfiche or paper media, or the problem of computers crashing,
| subscriptions lapsing, or for-profit online services shutting
| down (see "Ancestry deleted 10 years of my family's history",
| https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/myfamily-shuttered-ance...)
|
| Maybe 10 years ago, a few people in the Silicon Valley futurist
| community came up with the idea of a ball or disc etched with
| gradually smaller text an excerpt from the Old Testament,
| translated into multiple languages. It was kind of a Rosetta
| Stone ideal ... The plan was these balls/discs could be seeded
| across the world so even if there was some great calamity or the
| loss of written languages, future civilizations could resurrect
| them.
|
| There are many limitations of applying this idea to genealogy or
| any written record, including cost and the inability to update
| the text.
|
| It made me think that a more realistic solution to the genealogy
| preservation problem aligns with Kurzweil's "most primitive"
| take: Preserve core records on paper, share them widely with
| relatives and cousins, and use an easy-to-understand versioning
| system. This could also be applied to other family records, such
| as the grandfather's notes.
|
| We know high quality paper can last hundreds of years. It can be
| easily copied and spread, potentially allowing the information to
| last thousands of years, as evidenced by Roman, Greek, and early
| Chinese dynastic records and literature that can still be read
| today.
| beckingz wrote:
| so for digital formats .txt files?
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| That still leaves unanswered questions:
|
| What encoding - ASCII or Unicode? UTF-8, or UTF-16?
|
| What type of filesystem - FAT32, exFAT, ext4?
|
| What physical medium - HDD or SSD?
|
| OP's question goes deeper than just the file format.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| .txt isn't a format - what size will the bytes/words be, what
| character encoding will they use (EBCDIC? ANSI? ASCII? Fixed
| width UTF-32?, variable width UTF8?, Next decade's AI-
| designed super-efficient encoding?) and what human language
| will they be encoding? Aramaic? Medieval French? As he said
| we keep using "standard formats" but the standards keep
| changing, and so does the world around it.
|
| .txt doesn't address the content - something like tables of
| rainfall needs structure inside the text rather than runs of
| words. CSV? XML? Markdown or HTML tables? Audio, image,
| video, or more intricate things like a 3D model of a
| building?
|
| And it doesn't address the hardware (that PDP tape drive),
| who has a laptop with an floppy, Iomega Zip, CD or DVD or
| Blu-Ray drive at all these days? What are you going to do
| with grandad's SSD with built-in encryption?
| ilamont wrote:
| ETA: A longer excerpt and details about the Rosetta Disk and
| NanoRosetta projects:
|
| http://blogs.harvard.edu/lamont/2021/05/05/ray-kurzweil-on-l...
|
| _" The Rosetta Disk is the physical companion of the Rosetta
| Digital Language Archive, and a prototype of one facet of The
| Long Now Foundation's 10,000-Year Library. The Rosetta Disk is
| intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as
| an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination
| across culture and history."_
| (https://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/)
|
| _" For the production of nano inscribed nickel wafers or
| plates, the archival data in the form of pdf format is first
| submitted and organized sequentially or indexed systematically.
| After file conversion and other preparation for NanoRosetta
| processing, the documents or other data are then recorded onto
| a glass wafer by modulating a laser beam in a spiral or
| concentric manner using a polar raster direct laser etch. A
| matrix process in electroforming creates "father" nickel master
| from the inscribed glass wafer. An intermediate "mother" and
| final "son" can then be generated from this nickel "father"
| master wafer. For mass production, polymer copies can also be
| provided in lieu of nickel "sons." We also have the ability to
| combine digital data (CD or DVD) and analog human readable
| formats on the same disc."_
| (https://nanorosetta.com/technology/)
| reallymental wrote:
| An alternative comment:
|
| I've found people's handwriting deteriorate as time has gone
| by... cursive is rarer to come by (leaving the 'legibility'
| argument aside), typing has certainly contributed to this, but
| some people still write on boards to explore ideas and boy are
| those diagrams and writings unreadable.
|
| If the author posted some samples of the grandfather's notes
| (withholding personal information), that would have added a very
| personal touch to the article indeed, and also ensured his
| ancestor's work gets recorded by archive.com.
|
| edit: grammar.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I've been consistently embarrassed by my writing and drawing
| (cursive, block, white boarding, etc) since I was a kid, and I
| can't seem to get any better. My wife's penmanship in any
| situation is... great (stunning by comparison). I can read
| stuff she wrote 20 years ago - I have trouble rereading my own
| notes from 2 minutes ago.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I improved my handwriting markedly by teaching my children
| handwriting. Knowing I was setting a poor example for them
| was motivating.
| krrrh wrote:
| Drop loop cursive and get the book _Write Now_ which teaches
| Getty-Dubay italic to adults.
|
| https://handwritingsuccess.com/
| intergalplan wrote:
| That loopy-style cursive they taught us in school was so
| damn ugly, even when done perfectly, and not especially
| fast. I never understood why they were making us learn it.
| Its existence only made any sense to me whatsoever when I
| learned it was designed with a fountain pen in mind.
| intergalplan wrote:
| I have writing samples from second grade.
|
| My writing was much more legible then.
| medstrom wrote:
| Writing love letters and other notes to my girlfriend
| prompted me to look up videos on handwriting. It honestly
| doesn't take long -- in preschool it was torture, but as an
| adult you can achieve big gains in an hour.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| What videos did you use?
|
| Other people here, what did you use? I see there are a ton
| of options - Getty-Dubay is mentioned below but there seem
| to be many other similar systems.
| anotha1 wrote:
| Nice story. I was hoping for some more "groundbreaking
| revelations." However, the opposite was the conclusion:
|
| > he was a man like any other. He had hopes and dreams. Triumphs
| and failures. Faith and doubt.
|
| I write a lot of notes. I imagine there are some great takeaways
| in there. And sadly, I'm not very optimistic about those having
| any impact, especially if I get hit by a bus tomorrow.
| Mortality... Blah.
| johnx123-up wrote:
| For me... A Hindu (?) doctor who had his faith in Christianity
| is a striking contradiction.
| pratik661 wrote:
| I don't think thats really a contradiction. As far as
| science/engineering professions go, I think doctors tend to
| be the most religious.
| random314 wrote:
| Where does it say that he was a Hindu?
| guerrilla wrote:
| I know how you feel. I suspect the only way to get them to have
| impact is do something else great or become famous so that at
| some point someone even bothers to go through them. :)
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Hehe, sometimes feels like that but we have family stories in
| my family about incredible things in people's lives. Even if
| your descendants only get one amazing story out of your life,
| it adds up when combined with all the other stories from
| other lives.
|
| For just one example: one of my great great grandmother's was
| living in the desert and quick thinking when a son was hit in
| the face with an axe blade, stitched it up with her sewing
| kit and needle. He survived and recovered. Its just one
| story, but it's fun to tell in the family
| anotha1 wrote:
| Yeah, that's about it.
| ibudiallo wrote:
| As an HN user, when I die my notes might just disappear with me.
|
| My family probably won't be able to log into my custom made blog.
| It will go on for a few years then the domain will expire.
|
| My phone which gets unlocked with fingerprint or a 6 digit pin
| will remain locked forever. My computer, also with a secure
| password and encrypted hard drive will remain locked.
|
| All my accounts with secure passwords will remain unreachable.
|
| My dropbox which contains all my unpublished notes and books will
| probably expire and get deleted.
|
| I'll have to print some instructions and lock them in a safe for
| my family.
| js8 wrote:
| My grandfather (from Czechia, cca years 1970-1990) kept daily
| notes of what he bought and did each day (he somewhat obsessively
| quantified himself before it was cool). I think these could be
| interesting to a historian, but they're written in pencil and
| kinda hard to read/decipher. I don't think technology is advanced
| enough for automated extraction yet.
| seniorivn wrote:
| if you don't plan to profit from it, you can just scan it and
| publish as is. If it is of interest for historians they will
| convert it into data themselves (if you are tech guy you can
| help them cooperate)
| tinco wrote:
| It most certainly is, give a junior machine learning
| enthousiast a week and I bet they could have the entire thing
| OCR'ed, if off-the-shelf tools don't work.
| tartoran wrote:
| This type of 'discovery' won't be possible with the next
| generation as the digital version of that would be locked on some
| media (possibly encrypted) somewhere forever.
| swalls wrote:
| Good. Just because someone died, doesn't mean their personal
| writing belongs to you.
| nirav72 wrote:
| So are you saying an heir has no right to his/her
| grandparents writings?
| vlunkr wrote:
| Exactly, they belong to the good folks at facebook. On a
| serious note though, I think most people write journals with
| the intent of passing them down.
| astura wrote:
| Legally, this is incorrect, all possessions are passed onto
| heirs when one dies, which includes
| papers/writings/recordings. Heir(s) become the new legal
| owner and may do whatever they wish with the documents.
|
| It can arguably be morally questionable to read and/or
| publish _some_ writings if the author wrote them with the
| intention of keeping them private forever. Of course, if the
| deceased doesn 't tell you you'd have to guess. At the same
| time the person is dead so you can't exactly hurt their
| feelings, and presumably they knew the risk of writing
| something down is that we it might be read by the non-
| intended audience.
|
| Though you can hurt the feelings of other people who know the
| deceased and/or have a vested interest in controlling their
| legacy. You might also hurt people who are the subject of
| those writings.
|
| I think I understand what you mean though, with digital
| assets one can actually prevent private writings and thoughts
| from being read by others after death, if that's what the
| author actually desires, in a way you really can't do with
| physical assets. This is arguably good as it better honors
| the wishes of the deceased.
|
| However, in this case this is a memoir, which are generally
| wrote to be read.
|
| I'm with you though, I want my thoughts to die with me.
| syshum wrote:
| it is only good if that was the intention of the descendant,
| unfortunately we as a culture do not properly plan for death
| there for I can see a huge amount of data being lost even if
| the descendant wished for their family to see the data. (or
| did not have a strong desire for data to die with them)
| tartoran wrote:
| Yeah, I wonder how many people share their passwords with
| their loved ones while they're good and healthy, but
| disaster can strike anytime. Im thinking of an idea for a
| service to ping one every 6 months and if no answer is
| given back in another 6 months, then to allow a designated
| person to have all pasawords and keys. Some kind of digital
| will executor or something of the sorts
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Mine is in a safety deposit box, in 3 envelopes. Each has
| instructions and part of my private key that can be used
| to decrypt my files and passwords.
|
| Also has the password to my yubikey - which also has the
| private key on it.
|
| Only myself and my wife have access to said box, so if I
| die, then she can get to all my stuff, if we both die
| then the kids can get to stuff.
| astura wrote:
| No judgement here, just out of curiosity, why? Why do you
| want your heirs to access your accounts? For what
| services? What's sort of data is in there?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| My brother died unexpectedly in his 30s, after years
| living and studying in another country. Some things:
|
| I hope we found every relevant friend and invited them to
| the funeral. But as he travelled a lot, they are all over
| the planet, and the chance we found them all is basically
| zero. The only reason we found out about his first
| serious girlfriend was because he told about her a week
| before on the phone.
|
| We went to his country, hired a van, stuffed cleaned out
| his apartment, cancelled every service we found out, then
| went back home. We presume everything settled, but you
| have to know about a service to cancel it. I hope whoever
| hired his house did not get too much trouble with angry
| debtors and such.
|
| We found out about sides of him we never knew about.
| There might be other things, we'll never know. This is
| very hard for my parents.
|
| Some unscrupulous companies read obituaries and send a
| bill. Really. We had 2 companies billing him for services
| never delivered, just hoping the heirs would pay them.
|
| We did not manage to enter his gmail account. Google did
| not grant us access even when presenting a death
| certificate. They suggested we contacted an USA judge,
| and required everything done according to USA law, even
| if everything relevant happened in the EU. I still feel
| bitter about their total lack of sympathy and
| cooperation.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I don't know that you should feel bitter. If the
| situation was reversed, would you be ok with people going
| through your personal correspondence?
| syshum wrote:
| Banking, Utilities, Retirement Info, Document Repository
| that has import info about my Assets and my will, Code
| repositories, Credentials to my home Servers that run the
| Home Automation, Media Center, etc etc etc...
|
| All Kinds of things, I am 99% paperless at this point so
| all my info is digital...
| tartoran wrote:
| There's a good and a bad in it. But a lot of good stuff came
| out from people who died, great stories, artworks and so on.
| Why would it not be a part of the cultural treasure?
| archontes wrote:
| That's exactly what someone dying means. Their possessions
| pass to their heirs.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I did write a physical journal for a couple of years (and tried
| to start last year again briefly), but it just takes so much
| time compared to digital. The year I wrote all digital I spent
| half the time but more than double the detail and word count
| (like the difference was ~45,000 words a year versus ~123,000
| words a year). For the physical one I would spend up to 90
| minutes a day sometimes (I can write 2-3k for a single day
| sometimes) and have terrible hand cramps afterwards.
|
| And also as a safety measure I ended up transcribing the
| physical version to digital anyway.
|
| Most of it is notes in regards to studying and coming up with
| my game designs, but there are also personal life events and
| last year, some pandemic commentary I included in part just to
| document parts of this crazy period of time I lived through.
|
| 2020 was actually a bad year for writing though, and I only
| wrote about 47,000 words total last year (and 2021 even worse,
| I've still only written a couple of entries for this year).
| Pandemic screwed up my morning 'Go to Starbucks and write in
| the diary while drinking coffee' habit.
|
| But one thing I'm planning to do for the digital years is to
| (eventually) print out a copy via Lulu or something, so there's
| still a physical copy somewhere. Also my digital version is in
| Markdown plain-text on my Dropbox, so it's in the cloud and on
| every computer I've got.
|
| Also eventually I'll probably burn that plus some video/board
| game files onto a gold archive disc, so it will have a decent
| chance at still being readable 100+ years in the future,
| assuming there are still means of reading optical discs.
| satysin wrote:
| I keep a daily journal using the Day One app. [1] It has a nice
| feature to print-to-order a physical book of your entries. I
| have done this for a few "collections" of entries such as
| birthdays, weddings and other special/big events per year.
|
| And of course I regularly export my entries to PDF and text
| files which I keep backed up in several places. While not fool
| proof I believe it is enough to ensure it is all available if I
| were to suddenly die tomorrow. Perhaps a few recent entries
| might get lost if they cannot access the most recent entries
| locked in Day One but the vast majority should remain.
|
| Obviously I don't know if any kids or grandkids (if I have any
| one day) will ever read all I have written but it will at least
| be there should they want to :)
|
| I don't journal for them though. I do it for myself. Day One
| prompts me each day to review past entries for the day which I
| love. I also like to sit down from time to time and read back
| to past memories. It is full not just for writing but photos,
| videos, news articles, conversations I've had online, voice
| memos and a whole bunch of other things. Obviously the videos
| and voice recordings are not possible in the printed versions
| but they are all exported and backed up.
|
| If anyone reading this is thinking of keeping a journal I can't
| recommend Day One enough! It is one of the few apps I don't
| mind paying the yearly subscription for which says a lot as I
| detest subscription apps generally.
|
| [1] https://dayoneapp.com/
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye and photos will be gone too ... I buy printed photo books to
| at-least try to keep some pictures.
| astura wrote:
| Oh, stop, the vast majority of people of any generation don't
| write memoirs to be discovered in the first place.
|
| What I suspect is most typical? - My grandfather on my dad's
| side was illiterate and my grandma (his wife) is barely
| literate, so I don't think she'd ever write down anything more
| than a grocery list.
|
| Beyond that, if someone wants you to have/read something,
| they'd give it to you. If someone encrypts their writing or
| puts it behind a login, it's because they don't want you
| reading it.
| syshum wrote:
| Well that is not actually true for at-least 2 reasons
|
| 1. There are many things I do not want my family to access to
| today while I am alive, but wish them to have access to them
| if I were to die. My password vault as an example, they will
| need access to that to close my estate more easily
|
| 2. Many programs by default today have some kind of strong
| security, simply enabling this security by default to keep
| unwanted third parties out does not necessarily mean I want
| to also lock out my family. I many not want the PUBLIC
| reading it but that is different than not wanting family to
| read it. It also could be related to #1
| kortilla wrote:
| You don't log in as a dead person to close an estate (at
| least in traditional US financial institutions). There is a
| process specifically for this and having an account
| password isn't helpful.
| [deleted]
| aspaceman wrote:
| My mother committed suicide when I was a child. She kept a
| collection of journals, letters, writings, and various computer
| documents detailing her inner thoughts, bipolar disorder,
| specific medication schedule, ECT, and various medical records.
|
| I should go through it someday. I know it's probably a
| psychiatric students dream. A complete documentation of someone's
| entire life, with associated medicine schedule (and eventually,
| ECT schedule). I imagine there's some value to it.
|
| Really don't know where to start with it though.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I read a random letter from my grandfather recently. The most
| interesting part of it was how much mundane life updates were in
| it. Things that don't seem normative to communicate in written
| word anymore, because they're so transient they belong in a
| transient form, like a phone call. Letters felt much more like an
| ongoing spoken conversation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think social media has a lot of these mundane life updates.
| "Cut the grass today; ate a burger; here's the beer I'm
| drinking."
| brettermeier wrote:
| I don't want to create an account so I can't read this.... any
| idea how to get to the blog post without registering?
| kiwijamo wrote:
| I don't have an account but I was able to read this. Strange
| that there's a paywall for you but not me.
| ajaygeorge91 wrote:
| use incognito/ private browsing
| johnx123-up wrote:
| Outline is little buggy, but fast
| https://outline.com/https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/...
| brettermeier wrote:
| Ah, here...: https://archive.is/nLJdW
| 0b1k3n0bes wrote:
| I have been able to research multi-generations of my ancestry,
| and it's been amazing to say the least.
|
| Emigration stories to America are really interesting. My Great-
| Great-Grandfather was tied to the ship's mast 2x for being a
| "bad" boy at 10 years old.
|
| Another ancestor was one of the first martyrs of my church when a
| mob marched against them in Nauvoo. He deterred the mob at
| gunpoint 2x and was a marked man after that. He was later caught,
| beat and whipped to death.
|
| I believe family history/geneology is very important, and we
| should be researching to see what was sacrificed on our behalf,
| and also documenting our own lives for our descendant's benefit.
|
| Some resources: ancestry.com familysearch.org
| 0b1k3n0bes wrote:
| In addition, there are multiple Family Search centers
| throughout the world that specialize in digitizing records, and
| assisting people with their geneology.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I had a great-grandfather who was in the SS, in one of the
| divisions that wasn't really known for their good deeds to say
| the least. There is a journal which he wrote, I have yet to
| gather the courage to read it. All I know is some vague stories
| that go around in the family but from what I gather it isn't
| probably too pretty what he did.
|
| It's typical that most people will tell you their grandpa was in
| the resistance, rarely they will tell you that they collaborated.
| setgree wrote:
| I know what you mean, OP. On the other hand, your great-
| grandfather was just a man, and he lived under very difficult
| circumstances. I'd like to think that I would have risked my
| life and resisted in his shoes; but I have no idea. Best case
| scenario is that his diary humanizes him to you and to others.
|
| (Speaking as a Jewish American with no SSS relatives but many
| who perished in the Holocaust, FWIW)
| meowface wrote:
| >Best case scenario is that his diary humanizes him to you
| and to others.
|
| And the worst case scenario is that his diary demonizes him.
| Given the stories they mention and the potential SS division
| they hint at (perhaps one of the mobile death squad or
| extermination camp divisions), it seems quite possible.
|
| But, especially so long after he's died, it might be better
| to know who he really was, whichever way it turns out. If I
| had a relative who potentially did and expressed terrible
| things, even though it'd hurt, I think I'd want to know the
| truth.
|
| Or, as another commenter said, they could ask someone else to
| read it and give a vague but honest summary. If the contents
| are bad, they can learn that fact without the additional
| serious emotional impact of reading the lurid details.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Maybe let someone else read it?
|
| You could then ask them about it in non detailed ways.
| scanny wrote:
| It would be worth scanning its pages (even without reading) to
| make sure whatever history is in there is saved for posterity.
| whachawatch wrote:
| When you say "It's typical that most people will tell you their
| grandpa was in the resistance, rarely they will tell you that
| they collaborated." - do you mean that people lie about being
| in the resistance or do you mean that they only talk about the
| war if they were part of the resistance?
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Many people don't know because of the shame, their parents
| never told them they or their parents were collaborators.
| After the war many destroyed as much evidence of their crimes
| and kept everything to themselves. In the Netherlands the
| death penalty was brought back for just for these crimes
| after not having been carried out since 1850 (officially
| abolished in 1870).
|
| There was a strong desire for revenge in the first years
| after the war. That meant anyone who did anything 'wrong' was
| not going to talk about it.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Of course it might not really be lying but just being
| selective about what to say. Many people were collaborators
| early in the war when it looked like Germany was winning, but
| gradually shifted over to the resistance when it began to
| look like they would eventually lose.
| watwut wrote:
| Not op, but both happen. People do lie about their own past
| when it is politically or otherwise inconvenient. Including
| to their own family. People also lie about their relatives
| past, if it is convenient.
|
| And people are more likely to talk about their family past if
| it sounds cool and good. They are less likely to talk about
| ugly parts of it.
|
| Regardless of whether ugly is personal, business related or
| political.
| cableshaft wrote:
| There could be some serious historical value or insights in
| that journal, even if there are terrible deeds listed within.
| If you can't bring yourself to read it, perhaps consider
| sharing it with a WWII museum or historian.
|
| They might be willing to leave your great-grandfather's name
| out of it, if that's a concern for you.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I will definitely have to do something with it, at the very
| least photocopy it as another user suggested. It has luckily
| survived a fire, but I don't know if it'll be around forever.
| amelius wrote:
| Consider sending the journal (or a copy) to NIOD:
|
| https://www.niod.nl/en
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIOD_Institute_for_War,_Holoc
| a...
| amelius wrote:
| To add, from their website:
|
| > Even today, interesting things from the Second World
| War resurface. When people move house, when a house is
| demolished or when an attic is cleared. These finds can
| range from a pile of letters, to photos, films, diaries,
| documents or objects. Don't throw these documents away.
| NIOD welcomes donations of new material.
| soperj wrote:
| Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars),
| and honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have
| been all condoned, like the US dropping two atomic bombs on
| Japan is. The Japanese committed vast atrocities in China, but
| they were never made to sit in a war crimes communal because
| the US thought the chemical warfare research was worthwhile
| knowing. Either way, what you grandfather did or didn't do
| doesn't make you a bad person, and reading it might give you
| reflection to make better choices in your life?
| vmception wrote:
| Agreed, a single market Europe is all the US cares about
|
| It doesn't care if its German run, Russian run (as long as it
| is market based and not marxist based), or "not-German"
| _wink_ run like today
|
| It would have been tolerable just like Saudi Arabia is
| tolerable
|
| Liquidity, market depth, and less people to negotiate with is
| the American priority
|
| The moral highground arguments that it upholds now and in
| hindsight are just to continue deriving support from its own
| people, who culturally eat that shit up, but it can
| successfully package any moral argument for any scenario even
| if they are complete lies
| permo-w wrote:
| that doesn't make sense from an economic perspective. The
| larger your bloc is, the stronger your negotiating position
| is. The stronger your negotiating position is, the more you
| can make the US pay for your goods and services
|
| It makes very little sense to want simpler negotiations in
| lieu of a strong negotiating position
| soperj wrote:
| At the same time they use the countries within the bloc
| to avoid paying taxes.
| vmception wrote:
| Its the investors with a foothold in the US that want
| more markets.
|
| The country itself is a sideshow.
| burkaman wrote:
| Don't know much about the history of this, but it seems like
| there were substantial war crimes tribunals in Japan: https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#War_crime_....
| Almost a thousand executed, and thousands more given some
| prison time, including some very high ranking generals and
| politicians.
| soperj wrote:
| Interesting! Thanks! I knew specifically about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 not getting tried by
| the Americans, didn't know the rest.
| burkaman wrote:
| I see, yeah it's not surprising there were exceptions.
| Obviously agree with your larger point that winners tend
| not to subject themselves to tribunals.
| shliachtx wrote:
| > Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars)
|
| I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination -
| and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is comparable
| to most wars. Nazi Germany is viewed differently historically
| because it was different.
|
| That is not to say OP's grandfather is responsible for all of
| Nazi Germany's actions, but it is not just "lots of people
| did shitty things."
| soperj wrote:
| >I don't think Germany's singular goal of racial domination
| - and specifically extermination of world Jewry - is
| comparable to most wars.
|
| That wasn't the reason for the war. Nor were there any
| country actually try to help the jews before or during the
| war.
|
| It's also not different from thoughts at the time held
| throughout the western world. Britain specifically didn't
| help the jews during ww2 because they thought they would
| flood Palestine (a british colony) after the war. A famous
| quote in Canada before ww2 was that "We'd take as many as
| we can, but none was too much." America as well famously
| turned away boat loads of jews.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| > Nor were there any country actually try to help the
| jews before or during the war.
|
| Depending on how you define "country" (as opposed to just
| "a large fraction or majority of its citizens"), Denmark
| did in fact help Jews, at least Danish ones.
|
| And the story of Bulgaria is .. complicated. Again, they
| protected Bulgarian Jews in practice.
|
| Portugal helped not only Portuguese Jews, but many others
| as well. In particular, they generally allowed a huge
| number of refugees (16% of the country's population),
| including Jews, into the country.
|
| It's true that the main Allied powers were not
| particularly going out of their way to help Jews, but
| "any country" is a high bar.
| meowface wrote:
| >honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have
| been all condoned
|
| Oh, yeah, undoubtedly. "History is written by the victors" is
| one of the truest cliches. But whether crimes or atrocities
| are acknowledged or punished tells you nothing about the
| impact or severity of the actions.
|
| So, while one could certainly recite a laundry list of
| atrocities committed by the Allies which a victorious Nazi
| Germany would have prosecuted, and many by Imperial Japan
| that went unpunished (though you're wrong that none of them
| were charged with war crimes - many were, even if many others
| like Unit 731 escaped prosecution due to the US wanting their
| research [edit: I see someone else responded with this before
| I finished my reply]), WWII is difficult to write off as
| "everyone and everything was awful" like a lot of wars.
|
| Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and Imperial
| Japan's actions in particular were so unprecedentedly awful
| that far-future generations in those countries probably
| would've eventually had a reckoning and realized they were
| the worst actors in the war, like what eventually happened in
| the US when it comes to treatment of Native Americans,
| propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin America and
| elsewhere, and other things.
|
| All this to say - if the parent poster's great-grandfather
| was a member of a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and
| executed civilians en masse due to their ethnicity, for
| example, it can't and shouldn't be dismissed as "well, that's
| war, everyone is culpable, and you can't know what it was
| like to be in their shoes, and either side would be
| considered as evil if the other side won". (I know you didn't
| quite say that, but there is a certain false semi-equivalence
| here, I think.) It's not exactly wrong, but it misses a lot
| of the bigger picture.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >"History is written by the victors" is one of the truest
| cliches.
|
| It really, really isn't. Like, at all. No Historian would
| agree with you.
| meowface wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Genuinely curious. In what way is it
| not? Especially for the first few decades after a
| particular event. I'd agree that the victors don't
| necessarily have a permanent monopoly on history.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Every side was indeed awful, but Nazi Germany's and
| Imperial Japan's actions in particular were so
| unprecedentedly awful that far-future generations in those
| countries probably would've eventually had a reckoning and
| realized they were the worst actors in the war, like what
| eventually happened in the US when it comes to treatment of
| Native Americans, propping up brutal dictatorships in Latin
| America and elsewhere, and other things.
|
| You honestly think Americans are aware of even the most
| common atrocities committed in the name of colonization? My
| read is a) they mostly don't and b) there is an ongoing
| effort to victim-blame Native Americans going back
| centuries.
|
| The alternate reality where Nazi Deutschland won would
| likely similarly deal with the occupied USA/UK/etc like the
| US treated the natives.
| meowface wrote:
| >You honestly think Americans are aware of even the most
| common atrocities committed in the name of colonization?
|
| Increasingly, yes. I'm sure it'll be many more decades
| before it becomes more widely accepted, though.
|
| >The alternate reality where Nazi Deutschland won would
| likely similarly deal with the occupied USA/UK/etc like
| the US treated the natives.
|
| Very likely, yes.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > there is an ongoing effort to victim-blame Native
| Americans
|
| For example, CNN's Rick Santorum:
|
| > We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was
| nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but
| candidly there isn't much Native American culture in
| American culture.
|
| https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/138668534052253
| 696...
| r00fus wrote:
| The real curiosity is why corporate media allows such
| speech to be broadcast as if it was in any way truthful.
| Let's all forget that the US Constitution was based in
| part on the Iroquois Confederacy [1].
|
| Santorum is on CNN's payroll. Who or whatever is
| supporting Santorum isn't stupid, likely it supports some
| revenue/marketing scheme. All of this is fully funded.
|
| [1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/indians-and-the-us-
| constituti...
| soperj wrote:
| > if the parent poster's great-grandfather was a member of
| a Waffen-SS division that tracked down and executed
| civilians en masse due to their ethnicity
|
| Britain and Belgium especially have this all over their
| history, and no one cares.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Wrt Britain what are you referring to particularly? I
| know all sorts of terrible things British people have
| done, and some 'we' are doing (selling weapons to people
| for murdering citizens, currently) but I've not heard of
| murder squads in Britain since the civil war??
| meowface wrote:
| I'm guessing they're mostly referring to the history of
| colonialism by imperial Britain and King Leopold of
| Belgium. I'm not sure anything was on the scale of the
| extent of the Nazi regime's worst actions (though Leopold
| wasn't far off), but there were certainly many
| atrocities.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Oh my. Well just off the top of my head. The UK has
| committed widespread systematic war crimes/crimes against
| humanity for generations in Ireland (+ is responsible for
| the deaths of the famine), Kenya, India, South Africa and
| localised war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and many Asian
| countries. Bombing of Dresden also. To name but a few.
| Then you can probably argue forcing and dumping opium on
| China is another one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes
|
| Even today that are recent British war crimes where the
| perpetrators are alive and yet will never be prosecuted.
| [deleted]
| stronkLikeBear wrote:
| The Monuments Men Foundation[0] is a non-profit that, while
| they typically deal with artistic works, can absolutely assist
| with getting this to the right people to preserve it for
| historical value.
|
| Very happy to make an introduction if needed
|
| [0] https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/
| antattack wrote:
| This brings up a question: should children be responsible for
| 'sins' of their fathers (parents)?
|
| In my opinion, no. However, it gets complicated when one's
| status is derived from misdeeds of the predecessors.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| No, one hundred times no. Just ask yourself the opposite:
| should a child be honored for the goodness of his parents, if
| he is a vicious criminal? It's obvious that he shouldn't. By
| what principle could we say that, but still hold children
| responsible for their parents' wrongdoing?
| webreac wrote:
| There was a lot of mental manipulation to scapegoat the Jews
| for everything, to make them be seen as animals and not humans.
| I think reading this paper can help to better identify how the
| media tries to manipulate us.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/nLJdW
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Last year I found an easter egg that my father left for me in his
| address database. (He died in 2013, but was afflicted with
| Alzheimer's for the last 10 years of his life.)
|
| From my father's address book (a DbaseII file that was last
| updated on December 15th 1992). This was a note associated with
| my contact info. Found on February 16, 2020.
|
| Hi there, son. I doubt if anyone else will ever see these memos,
| but if anybody ever does, it will have to be you because you
| would be the only one with enough computer savy to dig them out.
| Hope you are doing well--and if I'm not still in this dimension
| when you see this--have a drink to your old dad's memory. Having
| you around gave me most of the pleasure in our family's growing
| up period! Live long and prosper...............
| chunky1994 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this, it's a beautiful expression of how
| uplifting emotion can be even in the face of how fleeting our
| lives are; especially during these times!
| testfoobar wrote:
| That's wonderful. Sorry for your loss.
| leesec wrote:
| What a beautiful easter egg.
| rainpain wrote:
| This made me shed a tear. Wonderful.
| the_arun wrote:
| This story inspires me to write notes for my Grand kids :)
| every wrote:
| I am soon the be a grandparent. I keep my missives and
| ponderings online but also archived. Perhaps not carved in
| stone for posterity but hopefully no more ephemeral than a
| physical notebook...
| bt1a wrote:
| Enjoyed this writeup, I'd love to hear some verbatim thoughts he
| had, if they're not too personal to share with the world.
| criddell wrote:
| Jerry Pournelle used to talk about his personal log. He kept a
| day book and would write notes every day about conversations,
| meals, things he did, etc... I heard him talk about it on This
| Week in Tech a few times and for years I've wanted to do
| something like that. I've done it occasionally but have never
| been able to establish the habit.
| jll29 wrote:
| My grandfather never wrote much in his life, he was a man of
| physical work. When he turned 80, he suddenly wrote up his whole
| life story, end-to-end.
|
| I've always wondered how complete versus sanitised his hand-
| written book might be, but there is some pretty gruesome stuff in
| it including eating a dog to avoid starvation, which resulted in
| extra torture because the only meat available was the beloved dog
| owned by the very commander of the prisoner of war camp where he
| was held during/after WWII.
|
| Perhaps one day, I shall scan, OCR/type in, and publish it.
| mynameisash wrote:
| > Perhaps one day, I shall scan, OCR/type in, and publish it.
|
| My grandpa (who I never met) was in Fiji during WW2 - not
| combat but support staff on some base. Turns out he kept a
| journal that my uncle now has. He made a photocopy and gave it
| to my dad. I was super excited to read about his experiences,
| so I asked for my own copy. I typed the whole thing up and even
| looked up references to what he was talking about. (There were
| a lot of entries about him going to see this movie or that with
| his buddies, but I hadn't heard of 90% of them, so I added IMDB
| links.)
|
| Almost the entire thing was mundane day-to-day goings-on and
| temperature and weather comments. He built cabinets for the
| base, went for beer with his friends, got letters from home,
| etc. I was expecting/hoping to at least hear his thoughts on
| things or what he wanted to do when he returned to the States.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Similar thing told by my grandfather, who was imprisoned in
| Russia for some time: They had to eat the grass to avoid
| starving. Every morning someone would be frozen to death and
| prisoners had to stick close together to not freeze. Or someone
| would have drowned in a puddle of water over night. Horrible
| gruesome situations.
|
| He said things became much better in terms of food, when later
| on he was imprisoned in some US prison (not sure that was in
| the US or in another place but managed by US).
|
| He wrote it all down as well.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Hey can I have more details? How would he also be imprisoned
| by the US?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| After so and so much time in Russian POW camp, he got moved
| to some US prison (camp?). Only after that he was released.
|
| They had to work a lot as prisoners, so I guess both sides
| wanted their share of work from war prisoners and so he
| first had to be in a Russian camp and then later in a US
| managed camp.
|
| In documentaries you can also see, that some more qualified
| people got moved to "in the middle of nowhere" in Russia
| and Siberia as "experts" to help with building something
| up, where before German soldiers had destroyed. If you are
| willing, you can watch some kind of war documentary at
| least every second day in Germany. After you have seen your
| 20th documentary, you might get tired of it. However, many
| of the old people watch that stuff over and over. I guess
| it is because of the huge impact those events had on so
| many lives in their youth and to keep in mind how horrible
| things went. Perhaps also to try and get some kind of
| understanding of how a society could screw up so badly. And
| perhaps they want to know about all the evil things that
| happened, which they did not know about. The things that
| happened outside of the eyes of most people.
|
| There is no lack of educational material at least. Just a
| day ago I saw an announcement on TV for another documentary
| for one of the almost infinite sides of that history: A
| documentary showing photographs and short clips taken by
| hobby photographers in 44 or 45 or so, showing a deceptive
| calm in some places in Germany, basically before things
| rolled all the way back, with only few indications of
| impending doom. You see, there is always something TV
| stations can send about it. Every little detail can be
| looked at and a documentary made about it.
|
| When my grandfather had was called into the army, he was 15
| years old. Send to the east, to fight a war. Many young
| people of that generation never finished school before
| entering the army. Basically children soldiers. They had to
| go back to school, as adults, when they returned from war
| and imprisonment. Re-education and further education.
| Imagine that contrast. I think it must have been hard for
| many of them, with post war trauma and all those memories.
|
| He was either extremely fortunate, or unfortunate,
| depending on how you look at it. Came into a field hospital
| with a headshot wound, but somehow survived. The doctor
| told him, that he could drink and smoke as much as he
| wanted to, because he wouldn't make it much longer anyway.
| I think that must have been a German field hospital and
| then later he must have been captured, and of course, as
| part of the army, taken prisoner of war.
|
| Well, he managed to stick around until a few years ago,
| reaching old age of over 90 years.
| toyg wrote:
| I guess he could have been a German POW captured in Russia
| and then sent back to US-occupied West Germany.
| pnutjam wrote:
| You might reach out to your local library or nearest university
| library. Many of them have some sort of local document
| repository. This is the sort of thing that should at the very
| least be photographed page by page. They would have done
| microfiche back in the day. Even without OCR, it's valuable.
| zedr wrote:
| He could also donate it to the Internet Archive's collection
| of documents.
| adonese wrote:
| Yes please! It would very interested to read it all. Also sorry
| for what your grandpa had to go through. Stories like these
| never fail to remind me how -mostly- lucky and privileged we
| are to live in such peaceful times.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| The commander of the prisoner of war camp fed his beloved dog
| to the prisoners?
|
| edit: oh, no they ate the dog and were punished for it I see.
| tzfld wrote:
| Same story with my grandfather and two world wars, communism,
| dictatorship, repressions. Unfortunately however a couldn't
| find yet a correctly working OCR that recognize his
| handwriting. Anyway, I scanned all the pages because the
| notebooks are rapidly degrading.
| brightball wrote:
| My grandmother put together a collection of copies of old letters
| from families who had been in our hometown for several decades
| and gave it copies to all of her children.
|
| Treasures of history right there.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Tangentially, I started my family a bit late in life, as such my
| daughter will be barely into her 30s by the time I reach my 70s.
| I started a journal for this reason - so maybe whatever family
| she has can know me. Might be a tad narcissistic, but I regret
| not having know my own grandparents very well, so maybe they will
| appreciate one day.
| hycaria wrote:
| I have the same age difference with my father. I have always
| been a melancholic and curious person so I ask a lot of
| questions. I think most people will have those questions that
| naturally come to them at some point. When you realize your
| parents are people with their own memories, hopes and flaws, a
| step that's probably called adulthood.
|
| A very common trigger for this, as I've asked about this topic
| to other people with elderly fathers, is becoming a parent. But
| for me it was leaving home.
|
| Also make room for such conversations. We had a month long
| vacation, just the two of us, which I remember fondly, even
| though there was no big event or deep discussion.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I was born late in both my parent's lives, and even though I'm
| only in my 40's, they are both now gone. The letters my folks
| wrote home while we were stationed overseas are one of my
| personal treasures. You might be writing for grandchildren, but
| don't downplay how important these artifacts are, even for
| children who already have spent years getting to know you!
|
| Reading the prosaic thoughts of my parents when talking to
| other adults was like peeking behind the curtain, and it helped
| me understand them better as people, not just Mom and Dad. I am
| grateful for it.
| awj wrote:
| I never even got to meet one of my grandparents. All I have is
| stories, and honestly not a lot of those.
|
| I don't think you should feel narcissistic at all. Family is
| one of the prime places where we share our wisdom and values.
| Where we pass on the results of our mistakes in the hopes that
| the next generation avoids them. Don't feel bad for trying to
| do that, it's one of the fundamental elements of human
| progress.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Thats not narcissistic but a very good idea. My wife is an
| orphan, and especially now we have our own kid, we wonder a lot
| about how her parents would think about this or that.
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