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Page 16.
 In the morning, Rob and Hannah drove up into the hills northeast of Heidelberg, in the direction of Peterstal (Peter’s Valley) but beyond. The narrow country road took them ever higher into dense forest among hilltops and low mountains, until they came to a crossroads with an ancient stone fountain. The fountain was topped with a stone Keltic cross covered with dark green moss and whitish lichens. Among the massive tree crowns, they could make out red rooftops all around. A sign read: Ödendorf.
An older, olive-skinned man stood waiting for them. He was white haired, and looked to be a robust, strapping seventy or seventy-five. He recognized Rob’s Frankfurt license plate (F followed by numbers) and raised a hand in relaxed greeting. When they got out, he introduced himself as Jack Rinconi.
“Thank you for meeting with us,” Hannah said.
“My pleasure. This is on the house. No charge. Always glad to help a deceased veteran’s kids.”
They shook hands and stood admiring the sunny, breezy heights.
“You can almost see Heidelberg Castle from here on a really clear day,” Jack Rinconi told them. He was from New York State, but had now lived in Germany as long as he’d spent during his youth in USA.
Hannah said: “We’re from Oregon, but we live in Europe.” They explained their current occupations.
“Wonderful,” Jack said. “Why don’t you park, and I’ll drive. I know my way around here.”
Towns left his vehicle in a small lot near the fountain. They all clambered into his Volkswagen bus, which had six or eight interior seats that made it not a van.
Jack drove along a one-lane mountain lane. “We’re almost on private land here,” he explained as the road became bumpier. It looked almost like one of those ancient Roman post roads that are all over Europe. Sharp bluish rocks stuck out of hard clay earth, with moss on the stone surfaces. They rolled into the final village on this mountain loop, where Dad had lived with his first wife for several years.
A stone marker proclaimed in Germanic lettering, which looked as if it came from Kaiser times a century or more ago: Verlorenau.
“This is as far out as you go in the Heidelberg area. Your dad married someone up here?”
Rob said: “We think her name was Stana.”
“Sounds Eastern European,” Jack said. “Something immediately suspicious there. Last name?”
“We think it was Chetko.”
“Hmm. That’s definitely not German. Stana would be short for Stanislava, which could be Russian or Stanislawa, Polish… lots of possibilities. Something strange there.” Jack got a concerned look as he drove slowly, with his hands resting loose and relaxed on the wheel. At one point, he had to pull aside to let a late model VW Golf race past.
“What do you mean?” Rob asked.
“Well, it’s a generation before my time at least. The old Germans used to talk about it. At the end of World War Two, this part of Europe had the largest refugee crisis in history. About thirty million people uprooted, including people of German heritage fleeing Slavic areas they’d lived in for hundreds of years. Millions of refugees were Eastern European slave laborers who had to be housed, fed, and repatriated.”
“Slave labor?” Rob asked incredulously.
“Sure. The Nazis had their own young men away fighting, and the women worked in factories or drove the busses or whatever. So they brought in lots of Eastern Europeans as farm slaves and factory slaves.”
“Hitler was just making Germany great again,” Hannah said with bitter sarcasm. “And turned all of Europe into a charnel house.”
“As did Napoleon Bonaparte,” Rob echoed their earlier conversations with Steve Towns. “Human nature never changes.”
Hannah said: “Why do humans have to get so ugly?”
“Power,” Jack said. “Greed. Money. Every generation has its megalomaniacs, and their simple, stupid followers. The uneducated who can’t think for themselves just love all that brutality; it makes them feel powerful themselves. Anyway, there was this huge flood of refugees. Among them, hiding, were tens of thousands of war criminals fleeing from justice. Everything from KZ supervisors to SS murderers and Gestapo types. A lot from the Balkans and that area also.”
“I hope that part of history never repeats itself,” Rob said.
Jack said: “Oh, but I think it does. As soon as people forget the horrors of the past, they start all over again. Another demagogue comes along and stirs up the lower half with false info and vague threats. Then the bankers and industrialists and generals see their opportunities, as they did when Hitler came to power in Germany, or Mussolini in Italy. They thought they could control him, but that kind of guy is like fire on gasoline with his hordes of uninformed, unthinking rabble. Then those hordes get put in uniforms and sent off to war to die for the moneyed class. They’re told it’s for Jesus or the homeland, and they fanatically believe all the lies. It’s an ancient story, in our DNA, and it’s going to forever cycle in a loop. Oops, there she be.”
“Be who?” Rob mimicked.
“Where I want to start. The village cemetery.”
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