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People you’ve known or met who could remember furthest back in history.

Some great stories folks, when I was little I used to love it when my grandparents told me stories from the childhood.
My paternal grandfather was born in 1910, he built a crystal radio set as a boy but when word got out he got fined as he didn't have a radio license. He did go on to become an electrical engineer and worked on the Lancaster bombers during WW2.
My maternal grandfather was born the son of a farmer and ploughed with an Ox as a boy.
My grandmother told me of how they went to school in their bare feet and when the local priest used to pass the playground he would through a handful of sweets over the wall then the children with shoes would try to stand on the toes of those without to get the sweets.

I got the impression there was quite alot of poverty during their childhood's and maybe alot they didn't want to tell, I really wish I had known them all longer and they had told me more, both my sets of grandparents were of warm and loving nature and I still miss them.
 
My mum was 90 last week. She grew up in rural Austria, near Graz, during the ‘30’s and during the war.

Some stuff she has told me about:

Hitler visiting her village and she was chosen to present him with a bunch of flowers.

My grandfather crying his heart out because the Anschluss had happened, and then being called up to a Panzer regiment within a few months.

A column of Jewish people being marched past the family farm, and the army “encouraged” the family out to watch them. Mum was eating an apple and some poor desperate woman grabbed it off her and tried to eat it. A soldier dragged her out of the column and shot her dead on the spot.

American P51 Mustangs strafing her and her school friends on the way home from school. Her best friend lost a leg, a classmate was killed. They would have been 12 or 13 at the time, so no chance of being mistaken as soldiers. I once made an Airfix Mustang model, she went crazy and made me throw it away and then told me why.

Russian forces occupying the area, having to hide in the trees in the orchard to avoid being raped/murdered. Female Russian soldiers stealing the family silver and threatening to castrate my uncles (pre teen at the time).

My grandfather coming home from being a POW and never being the same, a broken man.
 
That's some quite chilling memories your Mum has @Rob998
Although these events have been portrayed in novels and film it's quite different to hear the horror caused by the Nazi's (and others) during WW2.
 
My parents both came up through the Depression, and my dad served in WWII, two things neither of them wished to discuss.
 


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