[edwest2]

Thank you John. Perhaps you, and others, might be interested in the following account. My mother, a non-Jew, is the character in the following.

The German occupation government rounded up teenagers in a Polish village in 1939. They were placed on cattle cars, with each car containing an individual called a "supervisor." As the train entered Germany, they were told it would not stop, only slow down. Moments before the jumping off point, they were shown how to throw off the one suitcase they were allowed to bring, followed by how they would jump off.

She would spend the rest of the war in Germany at a large farm. One day, RAF bombers appeared overhead. The target, a nearby railroad guarded by flak guns. A bomb fell short, and detonated nearby, throwing up a wall of dirt. She was buried but survived.

A neighbor of ours, a non-Jew, was sent to a concentration camp along with his father. Their crime? Trying to hide Jews. His father did not survive. As a boy, I noticed he always wore long-sleeve shirts, even in Summer. One day, when he did not wear it, I saw the long tattoo on his arm. Only later did I find out what it was.