I’ve told most of this story in my ‘getting shit off your chest’ thread where I discussed my biological father.
He grew up for the first 5 or 6 years of his life in Cuba, to Cuban parents who were born in Spain. His parents had fought in the first Cuban Revoloution, and had become aquainted with one Che Guvara.
Anyway, so the Commies win, my biological father is born in '60, and his parents grew disenfranchised with this communist regime, so participated in the Escambray rebellion against them. Shortly after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs his parents were rounded up and thrown in prison. They were to be executed due to their activities, however Che Guevera heard about their arrest and overturned the arrest to a lengthy jail sentence, as they had become good friends with him during the initial revolution. #goodguyche etc.
So my father goes to live with his grandmother, and they feel it’s best that they get the fuck outta dodge, so they flee to Spain. Spain at the time was in a fascist dictatorship- Franco, where they lived for about 5 years. His parents were freed from prison a little bit later and joined my biological father and his grandmother in Spain. However, as it was a facist dictatorship they had moved too, and due to their previous political ideologies, they found it extremely difficult to get work in Spain, and after a few years of basically living hand to mouth, they spoke to some people who knew people who had moved out to Australia. With nothing else to lose, really, they then immigrated to Sydney and settled at first in a migrant hostel in Villa wood.
My father finished his schooling here in Australia, and then moved around a bit for his work - blinds/carpet salesman, lived in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.
A few years before I was born 1990 IIRC, his parents decided to be closer to their remaining family in Cuba. With the fall of the Eastern Bloc and communist regimes worldwide collapsing, they figured if they could be in America they could help more refugees and family member s get out of Cuba, so his parents sold their property in Enfield, and moved over to Floria.
A year later, and yours truly is born, and with my mother deciding she wanted nothing to do with my biological father, he decided he’s take a trip to go see his parents in Florida. Sadly his mum had gotten sick, so he wanted to go over there for a few months. A few months after arriving he met his current wife, 6 months later they were married, and 9 moths later popped out their first kid.
Life is fucking interesting. Isn’t it.
My mother came over from England with my grandparents in the early 70s, as 10 pound poms. Hilariously, my Pop has a fear of flying. Two days before they were due to fly out, he decided to sell the plane tickets, and buy boat tickets because he didn’t want to fly out. So a 24 hour journey, took 6 weeks via Spain, South Africa, Perth & Melbourne.
My grandfather was too young to fight in the war, but given he was 15-16 he applied and “served” in the Air Force, but as a bicycle courier.
In 1945 just before the end of the war he was working on a farm alongside captured German POWs - most of them were airforce pilots who had been shot down. These men were obviuously in POW camps, but the good ones were allowed out under military escort to work in the farms. One day he’s working alongside a German and a Ukranian POW. The story so goes that the Ukranian had been forced into the Nazis when Ukraine fell, so he was a “good Nazi”. Neither of then spoke a word of English, and my pop only knew how to say “Fuck Hitler” in German. So naturally he and the Ukranian got along quite well, and he’d smuggle in food for him.
So on this day they’re out cutting hay or something and the German POW fell down, and both my Pop and the Ukranian POW started laughing at him. Anyway, the German took offense to this, picked up the pitchfork that he had been working with and went to go stab my grandfather. The Ukranian got between them and fought the German off, suffering some minor wounds in the process - esentially saving my Pops life. The German POW wasn’t seen around much after then.
A few months after the conclusion of the war, the Ukranian POW was shipped home. My grandfather said that he feared that he would be killed by the Soviets given that he had ‘fought’ for the Germans. And yeah, he tried to track the Ukranian POW down, but didn’t get anywhere at all unfortunately. But my Pop would speak ever so highly of him. “Even though he was a Nazi, he wasn’t a Nazi” he used to say.
Pop never really forgave the Germans.
