My mother was born as a Berglanddeutsche, a German-speaking minority living in the Banat, a region that belongs to Romania since the end of the First World War. In 1944 the family fled from the Russian invasion to Germany. I never got to know my grandfather, as he died in a refugee camp in Germany, were the family ended up after a long trek. He had a heart attack but in the family it was always said that he had died of a broken heart because he was forced to leave his home to a country he didn’t know and the uncertainty of the fate of his son, a daughter and a grandchild who had stayed back in Romania. His son was in the army and was gone missing, his daughter was arrested by Russian soldiers and deported to the Donbas in Ukraine. Her two years old son was left behind alone at the house. My grandfather died without knowing that his son would never be found and that his daughter returned broken after 2 years of forced labor.
When I look at the world today I see that mankind hasn’t learned anything from history. War, destruction, suffering, inhumanity, dead, and torn up families are still a brutal reality for many people today. My heart can’t be other than be broken too.