Dad's dad: He got dementia pretty early, so my dad told me all of his storys. He got drafted to fight on the east front, not by choice but you would be a complete social outcast, if not imprisoned if you refuse to get drafted. He was some sort of dispatch driver, just bringing stuff from base A to B.

He eventually got captured by russian soldiers and brought into a "gulag" the russion working camps. It was a mine in siberia and i think they mined lead. He told my father that although the russians had a bad rep on how the treatet POW, but they treatet the germans just like the other prisoners(russian, mostly desateurs, theives ect.).

One story stuck with me all the time: because grandpa used to be a plumber und instaler before WWII they used him as a mechanic on the elevators. One of the things i had to do is holding a leather rug at the cable whn the elevator was in motion, because a damage on the rug would indicate damage on the cable. The rug was damaged and my grandpa told everyone. The germans refused to go in the elevator...the russians didn't(were forced to)...the elevator crashed. I don't know if they died.

Mums dad: Thank god, to young for the war, born in '37 he spent most of the times in the woods with his brothers hiding from the bombs. The heartwarming story he told me was, that they went back to their towncenter during the end of the war. At the time, american soldiers already captured the area and were driving their vehicles trough the town centre. My grandpa for the first time saw a black person, an american soldier of course. He must ave had seen my grandpa staring at him, so he approached him and gave him a choclate bar :) stil imaging my grandpas face when i here that story .