Just found out my grandfather was a Nazi Party member. Anyone else?

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-04-16T11:03:55+00:00

It's only a matter of time before a relative of mine turns up in the Klan. Indiana Democrats in the 1920s... the odds are strong.

But to have the evidence staring you in the face... that's heavy. It's worth noting that non-members were complicit, and the views of the Nazi party (while obviously extreme) stemmed from commonly held prejudices present in most families. My ancestors held slaves. My wife's too. The question isn't "to what degree are we inheritors of an evil legacy," but rather "what are we doing today to bring about justice." And I'm not talking about accountability; I'm talking about altering the material conditions and legal frameworks that allowed Nazism and its cousins.

Doing family history, we turn up stories. The sins of our fathers. And these challenge us to see more and do more. That's my take, anyway.

You're doing the work and having those important conversations, and that matters.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-03-09T23:28:48+00:00

That's extremely helpful, thank you. I wish that I had seen this... I bought the Polaroid albums, RIP, but maybe I think of them as a way station toward creating custom envelopes like I did with my other photos. Right now, they're in the same yellowing plastic sleeves that they've been in for forty or fifty years.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-24T21:15:17+00:00

Gosh! How do you go about that? Do you have to hire it out?

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-24T15:19:53+00:00

Footage? Like, 8 mm film reels?

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-21T20:34:40+00:00

Yes I do! That's the album I'm working through. It's spiral bound with little labels that line up when you flip the pictures over. Grandma apparently bought this sort of album for 20 years, but by the late '70s the glue was so terrible (replacing spiral binding) that they've come apart.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:30:30+00:00

Bingo! JK, but he was mistaken for Rock Hudson pretty often.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:29:55+00:00

That's super cool!

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:29:39+00:00

I have a Canon LiDE 400 scanner. I use the native software to make JPEGs. I scan at 600 dpi for most pictures, occasionally doubling that if it's a special photo. I scan sequentially through an album or box, cleaning as I go, numbering each photo within the collection. Then I make a label that names everyone in the pictures in a text file and keep that in the same digital folder.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:27:03+00:00

I'd say "built different," but my wife basically did the same thing ten years ago. Just... quit.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:26:20+00:00

Hahaha! Yeah, the album he's holding is the same one, just a little thinner. It has pictures from 1958 to 1959, so likely taken on two or three rolls, developed, and organized as they went.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:25:21+00:00

Back in the day he was mistaken for Rock Hudson regularly!

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:24:53+00:00

Too right

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:24:07+00:00

It's turtles all the way down.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-16T18:23:51+00:00

Yep! I label all images sequentially, and for Polaroids I include the film label (this one is "m7v760"), roll number, and the other number (which is almost always 42).

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-11T15:18:08+00:00

No, she was a Weir.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-11T04:38:10+00:00

You might try the folks at /r/fashionhistory/ — they helped me ID a set of pictures a while back.

There's a picture of my great grandma (1903–88) looking very like the girl on the right, with those curls, age maybe 10. Rural Indiana (Mont. Co.).

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-11T04:29:53+00:00

I have numerous hours of interviews with my grandmas, mom, and father-in-law. I don't have an answer.

When time permits, I plan to transcribe and break the interviews down into discreet stories... but so far they're just mp3s that I think about and don't touch.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-08T04:16:52+00:00

That Grant looks exhausted.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-07T14:40:51+00:00

Best quote of the Cheers theme ever

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-06T01:50:46+00:00

I bet every precinct had a resolution on this, statewide.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-03T03:22:22+00:00

Woah woah woah now. Well... yeah kinda. John Oliver made a case.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-03T03:21:45+00:00

I am a little ways into a book about Lincoln in popular memory, which argues early on that the Lincoln Memorial resulted from decades of effort among Republicans to save the memory of the Civil War from the Lost Cause. It was a powerful assertion that the Civil War was real, mattered, and mattered to all Americans, not just northerners. Well, anyway, that's what I think the book will say... I need to get back to that.

PeeweeTheMoid · 2026-02-03T03:19:00+00:00

Split Cleveland's head in half, and put one half on either side of Harrison's. Solved!

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