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In 1940, Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany. Because my future great-grandmother, whose name was Agnes, and her husband had a big grocery store on a transit road between two villages, their house was chosen by the Germans as a makeshift garrison. My family hated it. They spoke only very little German, and the soldiers made no effort to learn any Dutch. They treated my family as if they were mentally incapacitated yokels, and ate all of their food. There was one exception, however – a young soldier named Peter, who was actually interested in the village and frequently asked for directions to the best walking routes through the nearby forests and marshes. Grudgingly, my great-grandfather accompanied him, but over the next months, they hesitantly developed some sort of friendship, because it turned out that Peter not only was an adamant trekker who loved being outdoors, he was also an amateur photographer, just like my great-grandfather.
In the late Summer of 1942, something terrible happened. One evening, my great-grandfather and Peter were exploring the marshes and taking a few pictures. A few hours later, well past midnight, my great-grandfather came home, looking like an utter maniac, wide-eyed and sweaty, shaking and unable to utter a coherent word. The other Germans in the house were very alarmed, and while two of them guarded my great-grandfather, the rest went to look for Peter. From what my mother told me (and she heard the story from her own mother, who was about 9 years old at that time), the Germans came back in the early morning with some of Peter’s equipment, visibly shaking and completely silent.
