 Both of my parents' families, my father and mother's families, all lived in Berlin. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, things got slowly worse and worse and worse for them. That was when a program started called the Kindertransport, which is like children's transport. And allow children from infants to 17 the chance to escape Nazi Germany and go to England. It was the only way in many cases that they were able to survive the war. Just think how hard it must have been for the parents. How bad things must have been that the parents were willing and anxious to put their children into this program. So what a traumatic experience for all these young kids and their families to be put on, to be separated from their parents, not knowing if they were ever going to see them again, going to a country where they didn't speak the language, living with people they didn't know, having to go to school in a foreign country in a foreign language. Over time, I think about 10,000 children were saved because of the Kindertransport. But most of the children who were evacuated under the Kindertransport, most of their parents did not survive and they never saw them again. They turned their entire world upside down and sent their lives on a different trajectory entirely. It was a uniquely horrible time in history. Ted was born in Poland in Poznan and he was maybe 12 years old in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, the Anschluss. So he lived in occupied Poland and he spent some amount of time that I'm not sure of in camps in Poland, but in 1943 he was sent to a place called Middelbał, Dura, is the name of the camp, and it was a cave complex used by the SS to manufacture primarily the V2 rockets. Alongside of German scientists and engineers, many of whom ended up in our very town and helped us later with the Saturn program. I think that's part of Huntsville history that we need to remember. There's a dark side to the rocket program. He didn't talk a lot about his experience when I asked him what he did at Dura. He told me he was working on V2 rockets and I said, you know, what specifically did you do? And he said I was a welder and he winked at me and he said I wasn't a very good one. And that was fairly common for the prisoners if they had an opportunity to sabotage a V2 rocket they did. But the price was very heavy. If you were caught or suspected of sabotage they would hang you in the cave so that all your friends could walk by you each morning as they went to work. As the allies got closer to Dura they evacuated the prisoners there. Ted ended up in Dachau and that's a place that I had been when I was stationed in Germany. And so I knew what that looked like and I had asked him a lot of questions about, you know, he escaped. He escaped out of Dachau and walked south across the T-roll and the Alps into Italy. And, you know, I know the distance driving that and I asked him, you know, how did you do it? And, you know, how did you walk that far? And he said it didn't matter, you know, I was free. We had run into this thing like a T in the road. We'd come up this road and all of a sudden there was nothing but this entrenchment, this encampment in front of us. A little spatially fortified area almost as though they were making an effort to keep people out rather than worrying about keeping people in. And I think it was their experimental gas chamber. Well, I sat there for a moment when the officer tried to explore the building, maybe even explore the railroad that was sitting on the siding with a load of boxcars, you know, sitting there. Now, the information I have is that those boxcars were later discovered to be full of bodies, people who just died right there in the car. At that moment, my officer is just reinforcing the basic philosophy. Wherever we roll across now, it's ours. We're going to take it, we're going to secure it. I said, sure, boss, no problem for this Sherman, you know, we just walked through it. And I saw a stack of bodies, you know. That was the first thing that grabbed my eye. I said, here are bad bodies. Cordwood. And you say, oh my goodness, what his life brought me to. And then looking straight forward and here comes a body that didn't look much better, but able to approach me, walk in towards me. And just as I do today, I get tired, you know, he did. He couldn't make it that hundred yards to get to me. And he sat down on a stone. We called for a medics to come in there and take over. Did the man survive? You'd like to know. I don't. We were considered to be Jewish. And my mother and father, they were executed. I don't know why, where and when. Had a big arm band on and one side had a whip and one hand and a pistol on one side. He told me, he told my sister for me to take my pants off, drop my pants. And I was scared. I didn't know what they're going to do. I was crying. I know that. And I was very much afraid. But I never thought I was going to make it to 13 or 11 to 13 or 14. I couldn't comprehend. It was beyond my comprehension, my age, you know, to have so many things that happened to a human being, you know. In such a short time. We were in bunks. They were three high. I was the smallest, so I got the top bunks, the worst ones. The food, there was nothing to eat. We hadn't had anything, no food. We had a very, very little slice of bread. The hunger, the hunger. The hunger. Always something to eat. And that's the biggest pain that any human being can endure. Is the pain not having anything to eat. It was survive, survive, you know. And I was in Dahung, you know, so many times, you know, people took their lives. They ran against electric fence, you know. Or they were shot while running through the electric fence. From day to day, we prayed every day, from day to day, that we shall survive the bombing. We shall survive the atrocities from the SS and the Gestapo. And I said, I will survive. I will survive. No matter what. When you meet people that have been through those kinds of things, it's remarkable to me how graceful they are. And at peace they are. Ted had every reason to be angry with the world. But I never heard him say ill about anyone. Forget. But you shall never forget. You shall never forget. But forgive. You must forgive. And let's all be brothers in some fashion. That's the best I can give you.