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The people that remember the WW-II era are dying off like flies.

But then, I was 5 years old when the war ended. In the eyes of a 5 year-old there is not much context in what one sees. It's the adults that have perspective.

In retrospect, as bad as things were and despite the loss of the infant of the family, we were lucky to survive. We only spent a few weeks in a real concentration camp with people, mostly Jews, who undoubtedly perished. The slave work farm where we spent our days till the end of the war was not even guarded. You have to remember that almost all male Germans 15 to 45 were in uniform and at the front. The old man that ran the farm did nose counts. But, deep in Germany, where could a family run? Death would have been certain if you ran.

I was closer to 4 years old in the concentration camp. I can remember the dark dingy overcrowded barracks with multi-level beds, the electrified barbed wire on concrete posts and the walking sentries with dogs. I can remember the smell of a rotting straw mattress, and of course, bed bugs and lice. Fog, and that's about it.

I not certain, but probably because of my father's actions, we got sorted out and sent to the slave labor farm. It's slave labor because there is no pay, you get to eat and you get to live.

On the farm, 3 or 4 families stayed in a small two story building. As I recall, one single guy and one or two couples who stayed upstairs. My parents were working in the nearby fields all day. I can't be sure if my mother was able to check on us midday, but I was in charge of my 3 year old brother and the infant brother. We must have been locked in because I don't remember being outside w/o a parent. As I've mentioned other times, the infant died, probably of pneumonia. His death was within weeks of the end of the war.

A couple times my father was taken away for a few weeks to work with a shovel on defense construction projects, in particular anti-tanks traps. I can remember the elation of having him return. I can also remember, at dusk, walking up and down the road in front of the building where we stayed, my father and I looking for cigarette butts. In these days before cigarette filters, a tossed away cigarette butt had tobacco! A collection of butts and a piece of newspaper would become a makeshift cigarette.

I can remember the sound of distant artillery as the front moved closer. I can remember the sound of diving fighter planes. No movie I have seen has duplicated these sounds. I can remember the US Army soldiers walking down that same road. Shortly after that, we had to make tracks to the British zone to avoid being sent back to the Soviet Union. That would have been certain death also.

There's more to it, of course, but no book.

As I said, we were lucky!

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