06/05/2026
Grandpa Z’s mother’s name was Maria Bissen (pronounced Beeson) Zenner. Obviously, we cousins are all her great grandchildren. She had 8 siblings, one of which was her brother Michel. They were from Vichten (pronounced Feeshton), another small town about 7 miles from Diekirch. In his biography, Jempi speaks of walking to his Grandmother’s home when they were little kids to visit and that it took all day to get there. So now with that prologue, I’ll explain the four pix in this post. The maiden name of the woman pictured with me is Mariette Bissen. She is a great granddaughter of Maria’s brother Michel, so is in our generation of this expanded family tree. In the picture of the two tone house, the part that is beige, is the Vichten house that our great grandmother and her siblings grew up in. Unlike Jempi’s childhood home, the Bissen home survived the war. The grave marker is of Michel in Vichten, Again, he is Mariette’s great grandfather. Now the last pic to describe blew my mind cuz it is a pic of Mariette’s grandfather, Aloys Bissen, a son of Michel. He would have been a first cousin to Jempi. He was conscripted into the German army while the Germans were occupying Luxembourg. They sent him to Russia, but east of the Crimean peninsula, so he was south and not anywhere near Siberia, or the fighting towards Moscow. At some point, one of his brother’s was getting married and he was granted leave to attend the wedding back in Luxembourg. So he made his way back to the wedding on his own. By that time the wheels were starting to come off for the German Army, so he decided he would simply not return to the German Army and went AWOL by hiding in various homes around Diekirch. And he successfully hid in Diekirch right through the battle of the bulge until Diekirch was liberated……Mariette said he beat the odds, cuz apparently there were many German sympathizers in Diekirch who would have ratted him out had they knew he was in hiding there. Quite a story, eh? Now, this is what hit me when first seeing his picture…just how he could easily have passed as Uncle Joe’s twin. Aloys was 21 in this pic. Compare it to Uncle Joe’s when he graduated from high school. Mind boggling!
