I’m reaching out to this community in hopes of finding someone the help me solve this mystery. Bit of backstory:

I live in the USA. My mom is originally from Germany but immigrated to the USA in the late 70’s. My mother’s mom (my grandmother) was originally from Holland but fled to Germany during WWII. She never knew her real father and the story goes something like this:

My great grandmother was from a rather poor family in Tilburg and she was secretly seeing a wealthy boy and eventually got pregnant. The wealthy boy’s (my real great grandfather) parents wouldn’t allow him to marry her because of the difference in social standings. They did offer to take the child (my grandmother) but my GG refused and kept her. She was raised by her mom and evil stepfather. They had more children. My grandmother was physically abused by her step father and made to sit in a corner and eat by herself….many awful things.

I have a book that’s in Dutch that I think holds a lot of answers. It’s about the whole history of the family and the business. I think my great grandfather’s family owned several fabric factories and there’s even a museum in Tilburg explaining all of the history.

My grandmother was a very strong and beautiful soul. She’s been gone for some time and my mother is aging. Please help me get to the bottom of this.

Thanks in advance!