{"id":14077,"date":"2026-01-06T15:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T14:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/?p=14077"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:04:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T07:04:48","slug":"iii-7-the-sad-eyes-of-oncle-rudolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/iii-7-the-sad-eyes-of-oncle-rudolf\/","title":{"rendered":"examples &#8211; 10 &#8211; Uncle Rudolf&#8217;s sad eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Uncle Rudolf&#8217;s sad eyes <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Our thoughts lingered on the photograph of the Wehrmacht soldiers. \u201cTake good care of it!\u201d N. said to me. \u201cIt\u2019s the only photograph we have. And yet he was completely apolitical,\u201d says N. \u201cKarlsbad was world-famous, after all. Princes and emperors were there. Goethe was there. It was a whole different world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Under his steel helmet, Uncle Rudolf looks like all the other Wehrmacht soldiers. But if we look more closely, we can see his sad eyes. Uncle Rudolf was the head doorman at the Hotel Imperial in Karlsbad and had taught himself several languages to entertain his guests well.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11089\" src=\"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1940-Widmung-von-Robert-Blaha-an-Nessi-Ede-ist-ein-Ort-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><br \/>\nBack of the photograph a note of Uncle Rudolf for N.:\u00a0 &#8220;Before leaving Ede on 06\/25-40, for N. as a memory&#8221; N. has written down all the addresses and personal details of her family members in her red notebook. And that&#8217;s where i also found a trace of Uncle Rudolf: Missing since October 10, 1944\u2014Memel\u2014Buckwa No. 54 \/ Haperspirk Parish Office, Vol. III, p. 134. No one should be left behind.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14080\" src=\"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_3312-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wonder if he killed himself?\u201d N. asks, looking at me. Suicide among German Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front is a firmly established social taboo, but families do talk about it. After Boehmia, which belonged to Czechoslovakia, was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, Uncle Rudolf was drafted for service on the Eastern Front in June 1940 and never came back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uncle Rudolf&#8217;s sad eyes Our thoughts lingered on the photograph of the Wehrmacht soldiers. \u201cTake good care of it!\u201d N. said to me. \u201cIt\u2019s the only photograph we have. And yet he was completely apolitical,\u201d says N. \u201cKarlsbad was world-famous, after all. Princes and emperors were there. Goethe was there. It was a whole different [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-examples"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14077"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17995,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14077\/revisions\/17995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}