My great grandfather, Leo Birkmann born in 1911. His family were generation on generation of painters, sculptors, and Christian. Making a living from interior decorating in Nuremberg, Germany. He was drafted into Hitler's German army 1939 at 28 years old. From the crystal night to invading Poland he was in uniform and left not a word with the whole family tree about it. 1942 he was deployed to Tunisia. One day his commander approached him and said, there is a big battle coming and we will not survive it. As my last wish, I will give you official orders to deploy back to Germany. Take with you my portrait of my self which you painted and give it to my wife in Germany. So my great grandfather sailed home across the Mediterranean. Home to his toddler son, Leo and his wife Helena who kept the home, business, his inheritance, while he was away. Little did he know she thought he was never coming back and was pregnant with another man's child. She secretly aborted and according to my mother he never knew, she took that secret to the grave. Leo was redeployed as a tank instructor at the rear of the battle of the bulge in 1944. He was near Paris, where the American logistical head was going to smash first. The Americans came through Normandy beach outside of Paris because they needed a never-ending column of war machines and soldiers to cross the English channel onto that beach. It was the most direct and capable of volume route for logistics. Leo is captured as a prisoner of war by the Americans because the German officers are surrendering whole battalions altogether. The Americans punch two long arms down both shores of Europe pinning Berlin between the Soviet army who was advancing after Stalingrad and the impassible Swiss Alps. Meanwhile another American army was storming west Italy to come around. Therefore immediately every officer with a brain and a radio knew the fire wall was coming from all four sides. Leo was in the prisoner of war camp two years where he painted portraits for the guards. One day he painted on his chest and pretended to have tubercluosis. Upon x-ray he was discharged from the american prisoner of war camp to "live his last days" home. Leo came home, reclaimed his inheritance and finally was with his German people. The German Christians of Hitler's holocaust. Post Holocaust Germany. He painted and sculpted all the days. His son Leo got married at 16 years old with his impregnated girlfriend. That baby was my mother Helen. Leo adored his son Leo's children. He played and cared for them often. When Leo became much older he became afraid of death. It became a struggle of anguish inside him to face the idea of death. He took his wife for one final hike on the Swiss Alps and asked her to help him end his life. He came home and took sleeping pills. He asked her to hold a bag on his head when he fell asleep to make sure he passed away. And Leo Birkmann died that night through the help of his wife Helena. Leo's son Leo could never forgive her till the day she died he refused to attend her funeral. Leo's son Leo lived to his seventies with the same woman of his children since he was sixteen years old. She became sick and fell down the stairs breaking a leg. In the hospital she became infected and after many months not improving she died. That night Leo went home and took a very long long long drink of alcohol. His daughter, my mother's sister, former vice president of a bank. Feeling something dreadful came to her father's house the next morning and found his lifeless corpse. She divided up the hundreds of painting inherited from her grandfather Leo and the property of her father Leo between herself and my mother Helen who had immigrated to New York, USA at eighteen years old.
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