My husband’s family was split up when they were displaced in the wake of the second world war. His mum was the second youngest of 13 siblings and she ended up in the Palatium, as far west as they could come from their home in Eastern Prussia. Other siblings settled in the Ruhrgebiet near Dortmund. About half of the family stayed in Brandenburg, near Berlin in the German Democratic Republic. Because of this the siblings who ended up in East and West Germany could not see each other for almost 40 years. Contacts were limited to letters and occasional parcels. And once it became available, the spoke on the telephone.
Hence there is a whole branch of relatives my husband only met in the 1990s. Since we lived in Africa and the Middle East, the contact was sporadic. Only in 2014 he decided to visit in Brandenburg. He met his aunt, the younger sister of his mum, for the first time and was surprised at how much she resembled his mum in looks and gestures. He met cousins and their kids and grandkids. They discovered similar features and quite a few interests and character traits which were alike – not doubt they are related!
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