yes, the history still lives in the memory of those who survived. but they don't teach you it at school.
Discussion
also, yeah, i know that my dutch relatives a bunch of them live in Bonn, because i met a dude in prison who when told him my last name said he knew people with that name in Bonn. not many people in the world with my last name. maybe several hundred, so almost certainly no more than 3rd or 4th degree from my family.
the family was always historically located in the region of modern east netherlands/west southwest germany. so, similar thing.
families tend to cluster in regions, it's what the original meaning of the word "nation" was - a cluster of related people. there's a lot more traveling around these days because of jurisdictional arbitrage though, governments were a lot slower and less aggressively, and unitedly, crossing people's redlines and driving them away, in the old days. since the 20th century, the speed at which governments have unified in blocs and had population bleed has accelerated.
Go forward, ask Silberengel how many (actually few) family names exist in the german black wood forest 😁😁😁
In Bavaria and other regions they startet to add the location in the village to the family name to have at least some variations, its like 'topsmith' 'bottomsmith' 'frontsmith' 'backsmith'. They actually all have the same name, one big familly.