• doingthestuff
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    2 days ago

    My grandmother just passed last year at 100. She wrote exactly like this but in English. She grew up in a German speaking home in the US, her parents had been part of a large group of Germans who had settled in Russia because conditions in Germany were worsening. They broke wild land for farming, built roads and houses, dug wells etc. When Russia seized all of their farms and packed them into train cars where many died, they fled to the US.

    My great grandparents got their citizenship when he fought in WWI. I met him once before he died, he had the same first name I do and he had a wooden leg from a rock slide unrelated to his service in the war. I have a decorative plate with his likeness with a moustache and a cigarette hanging in my kitchen.

    I can read this stuff though, my grandmother sent handwritten cards and letters for 40 years of my life. Also I have lived in Germany although my German isn’t very fluent.