My World War II guitar and how it came to life again

Recently I rediscovered my great grandfather's guitar for the first time in decades and it's absolutely stunning! Here's a story about a guitar, life, war and legacy.

My great grandfather came from a small village in northern Croatia called Koprivnički Bregi (Koprivnica being my hometown and the first bigger town to the village - hence ''koprivnički'' meaning ''Koprivnica's'' and ''bregi'' meaning ''hills'' in my croatian dialect called ''kajkavski'' - you can read about it here and it's very interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajkavian)

(this is a typical house in the village)

I don't remember him much but I do remember he always stroke me as a gentleman, wearing a suit and standing in a very strict posture. He was a man of many talents: he was a musician and he played everything from a clarinet to various traditional croatian instruments. He was also a photographer and he developed the photos in his own dark chamber. He was a fine craftsman and the thing that fascinates me the most is that he did a lot of field audio recording. He would go out in the woods and just record all kinds of sounds he would later listen to at home.

(this is how Koprivnica woods look like. I shit you not. It's amazing.)

Anyway, he worked as some kind of a heating engineer. I'm not exactly sure what he did but I know it had something to do with installing all kinds of heating systems. Back in the 1930's he worked somewhere in Europe for some military base, installing heating systems. He travelled all around Europe and was probably the only person from Koprivnički Bregi at that time to even leave the country. When the war hit, he was captured (because he was Slavic) and ended up somewhere in Nuremberg and was supposed to end up in Dachau. I do remember he had a number tattooed on his arm but he never spoke of it. All I know is he got away after the train he was transported in was bombed. He fled back to Croatia and along the way he got this guitar. As far as I know, it was a gift from someone he had helped during the war. What he didn't know was that Croatia also became a nazi country in the meantime so he was captured again and was sent to a concentration camp in Koprivnica to be shot. He ran away again and helped his friend (who was from the same village and who is still alive) run away too. They were hiding in a barn in their village until the end of the war.

I remember him vaguely, but I remember his biggest wish was for me to become a musician. He died of some kind of cancer and never lived to see me play (I was 6 years old at the time) but I remember this guitar. Years later, I saw the guitar again in my grandmother's house but she didn't want to give it to me because it reminded her of him. This year she finally gave me the guitar because it started to deteriorate and someone had to have it fixed.

When I got the guitar it was actually in good shape. The headstock was broken and somebody superglued it back badly, the bridge pins were missing but other than that, it was fine. So I went back and bought some extra low tension strings because I didn't know if the neck would hold and re-stringed the guitar for the first time in more than 30 years. It's a short scale small body guitar similar to that Robert Johnson 1920's Gibson model, but has no serial number or the name of the craftsman so I don't have a real indication of what this type of a guitar really is.

Yesterday was the first day I ever heard the sound of this guitar (I may have heard it as a child but I can't remember) and the first time it's been played for over 30 years! You can't imagine the excitement I felt when I started playing it! It was just so amazing I sat there and played it for 3 hours straight. I had some trouble tuning it since the headstock is glued and sort of skewed a bit to the left, but the sound is amazing. It's really rich and warm but it's crystal clear. It's a specific sound and it's very very loud for such a small instrument. It's a very special feeling, playing something that is more than 70 years old and has such a story. So now I'm determined to get it back in its former glory and play it live. It's really amazing how much life can be behind an instrument and this guitar is going to live for a long time!

I played one of my tunes so you can hear the sound of this beautiful instrument. It's in the video below.
(it's slightly out of tune and I'm still getting a hang of this tiny neck but...)