What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

My Farmor who lived to be 103 was a power house. Not only was she a teacher in her town up North but before WWII broke out she traveled to Germany for what she always told us was “vacation.”

She had an album of her trip with girlfriends down to Germany prior to the war breaking out. She was stunning in her 20’s & a real catch. But I think she was on assignment from the government. Everyone in Europe knew how dangerous Germany had become & she traveled to the belly of the beast, Berlin & Frankfurt.

She’d often take out that album & show us grandkids all the flags that were hanging in Berlin & Frankfurt. I think she was so beautiful the government thought she could con her way out of a situation if it became dangerous. Something she in fact did during the war & the occupation when my grandparents had Nazi soldiers living with them.

She battered her eyelashes & spoke fluent German so the soldiers would look the other way. She was in the Resistance & came to my grade school once to talk about what that was like. They used anything to disguise their messages to one another & my grandfather was honored by the King after the war with a medal, however we were never able to find out for what. My guess is that it had to do with him smuggling people to Sweden during the war, as he knew the mountains better than the soldiers. He also knew all the positions they were in & managed to circumvent them.

I’m proud of my heritage for this reason & you can still find remnants of where the soldiers were in the mountains by her town.