A very close friend of mine was born in Berlin during an Allied Air Raid that blew the hospital up his mother was in she moved to the Railway station in labor and the bombs blew it up. Yet she lived and gave birth to him outside on the sidewalk.
His father was a guard at Auswitch Concentration Camp. He came to America after being release from a POW Camp in 1951 in Germany he did not reveal his past. His mother and all her family lived in Georgia, They were Germans living in what was Russia. When Hitler invaded Russia they brought all her family as well as all others out into the street and executed all males above 10 years of age. Raped and killed all older women and took the girls above 12 years or so and up that were of use... to them. They left all the others to fend for themselves and burned all buildings. Only a very few of the children lived. Babies were left on the sidewalks or thrown alive in the church that was burning.
These females were taken with the German Army to Stalingrad and when the attack failed abandoned them to be captured by the Russians.
My friends mother was taken to Siberia by train thousands died in route, they were let out into the snow with nothing...nothing...nothing. they had to fend for themselves and September 1943 she escaped and made it back to Berlin in 1944. All her sisters and aunts cousins, the ones that lived stayed in Siberia until the collapse of the Soviet Union and I took her and her son to the Denver Airport to fly to Germany to meet her lost family. Her husband got leave came home and got her pregnant.
My friends father was found by the Israeli Secret Service living in Chicago and was in the process of extraditing him to Israel for trial when he killed himself.
I had he and his mother to my home many times for dinner and spent many many hours talking to her about the experiences she had during WWII and before the war. She is now in a nursing home in Chicago and does not know who she is.
As one who had studied this time of history I wanted to know how in the hell did it happen, how could it?
She stated to me that before her family was murdered by them, her and her entire family, as proud German stock, thought that Hitler was the Saviour, the real second coming..( yes her family were Protestants and true practicing Christians.
He was bringing back National Pride from the ashes of World War I, he was raising the standard of living of a people that were living in unbelievable poverty. Just think the Public Works, the Autobahn, the Volkswagen, Huge public works rebuilding destroyed cities and so on. Pounding that drum of National Pride every hour of every day and giving the people hope. All along he was rearming with plans from the very earlist time to seek a path of War.
The people loved him all Germans were willing to anything he asked and they would follow him to HELL and they did.
This family particularly has helped me understand what happened and how it happened. Their story, while full of horror and unbelievable suffering is just one of millions of family stories from all sides of that conflict.
My friends father was regular army and according to him, as told by his mother, was ordered to report to Auswitch and once there was afraid to refuse to do what was expected. He openly told his family of mass shootings hangings and the like that he participated in. She told me at first he was appalled and afraid. Not for love of the Jews as he hated them Hitler had made them the major scapegoat along with the Allied Treaty of Versailles and they were to blame for all the suffering of the German people.
The oddest thing is that his mother does not hate the Germans Nazi's for killing her family and taking them to Stalingrad with them only to be abandoned and left to be captured and imprisoned by the Russians. I just can not understand why she does not hate them, she knew what was happening with Jews as she personally watch many executions as the Army went into Russia. She personally seemed to have no emotion nor sorrow for those people when I talked to her.
My only regret is that I did not make recordings of her story and what a story it was. She explained so elegantly how the people loved Hitler and why. She told me that once he reached a certain point in power no one would dare question him or the National Socialist Party. However, no many wanted too they were happy he was their Saviour.
Right now Obama is the Second Coming to the far left and many in the middle they see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. They do not care as long as he gives them what they want, more gimme gimme. If he does, I am afraid many in the middle and the right will fall in line to get what they want and not give a hoot what he and the Democratic Party does as long as he gives them whatever and saves them.
Thats where the real danger lies, if it goes that way, it does not take a lot of imagination to see that it easily could, if people are afraid or desperate. Thats where it not hard to see that something like that could happen again.
Then take up the guns and have the use of the Militia to quell civil unrest, It is getting just a little scary to me.
