My Grandfather

These two photos of my grandfather gain importance with years, because so few items survived immigration and moves, moves, moves. Also, it’s a wartime memory, and our generation once again has added wars to the daily to-deal-with list. Finally, here’s my first time using AI in the attempt to decode what was really happening in the old photo.

Photo #1: My grandfather, the imposing captain, stands toasting while his soldiers sit on the ground with the jovial spontaneity of Monet’s models. Where were they, what military advances did they celebrate? First, I tortured my dad, trying to squeeze the backstory out of him. My grandparents spent lifetimes trying to suppress family history, and here I am walking around, panhandling for family stories that need to be forgotten. So many wounds, so many abrupt losses and severed roots. Moral losses also abound, for example, a loss of the wartime euphoria, demystifying that celebratory drink.

I summoned the help of AI. Judging by the roofs, the bivouac is in Ukraine or Belorussia. Judging by uniforms, these are Soviet troops circa 1941-1943. Sorry, I can’t say more, replies my laptop’s kindred spirit.

Photo #2: Thanks to the belted gymnastyorka without shoulder boards, the photo can be easily dated to 1941: he’s already promoted to an officer rank after the Finnish campaign, and has time and chutzpah for a formal photo before deployment, but the shoulder boards’ reform hasn’t occurred yet. As for the background… what a sec, isn’t there a fake backdrop rather than a real portal? A studio portrait, then? - But it’s anything but the floor of a respectable provincial photographer’s space. AI provides a surprising detail: during deployment, it was customary to put up makeshift backdrops to photograph departing troops - which takes me to a platform somewhere along Kiev–Odessa railline in one of those unnamed towns that turned into ghettoes by the end of that summer.

Was it for camouflage purposes? Was the station already defaced by German bombings? Did those soldiers and their commanders miss simple routines? And was deployment a price of life? Those who stayed behind all perished…