Like my father, Becky’s dad landed in Normandy after D-Day. He arrived with General Patton’s US Third Army at Cherbourg at the end of July 1944. Under-age, Becky’s dad fought in some of the bloodiest campaigns of the war - the break-out in Normandy and then defeating the Nazi counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge - before invading Germany.
He has never talked about his experiences, beyond a few, typically humorous, anecdotes. It is hardly surprising. He probably only survived because he spoke a little German (actually, he spoke Yiddish) and was looked on as valuable after all the official translators had been killed within days of leaving Cherbourg.
Becky and I visited Cherbourg this week, but it was not Becky’s father's footsteps we were trying to discover.
Between the wars, Cherbourg had been one of the major ports of departure for European migration to the United States of America. From the early 1930s liners departed from a grand Art Deco terminal to travel to New York. The terminal now houses a vast modern museum to the sea, complete with aquaria and a nuclear submarine.
In 1922, Becky’s grandmother left for a new life in America. Thousands of migrants from across Europe would huddle on the quayside, waiting for the liners to dock. The shipping companies would run medical tests and check papers before allowing passengers on board – the companies would be responsible for paying passage back to Europe for those who failed the immigration procedure at Ellis Island.
A few years ago, Becky and I visited Ellis Island and discovered in the archives that Becky’s grandmother had travelled with her sister on the Mauritania from Cherbourg to New York. Before that she had travelled from the city of Uman in what is now the Ukraine.
It was incredible to be in Cherbourg and to try and imagine the amazing adventures that the thousands of migrants – including Becky’s grandmother – embarked on from this port.
For many - particularly Jews from eastern Europe - this would prove to be a voyage of survival, with no family members surviving the famines of the 1930s, the second world war and the Nazi Holocaust.
Again, we were struck by the enormity of history in these lands, the terrible suffering of the last century that – thankfully – never quite reached the British mainland.
Living in mainland Europe has given us an opportunity to uncover the local history – made more poignant by family connections – and has allowed us to understand some of the nuances of how post war Europe has been shaped.