In San Francisco I was hardly aware that fall had come. I was shielded from the countryside which produced the harvest, the laborers picking the bounty of fruits and vegetables in the nearby groves, vineyards and valleys. We lived in a cocoon of mild climate, an ever-engaging variety of food reaching our table. It was easy to succumb to this comfortable way of life which our adult caretakers provided for us. We were not alone in enjoying this protective tent. Everybody I knew seemed to exist under the umbrella of mild weather, a pleasant climate of self-indulgence, removed from the world. Coming from the Europe's cauldron of hatred and war, I was amazed at the political naivete of the people I encountered. Even our fellow Jews didn't seem to know what was going on across the oceans. To most, Europe was on the other side of the globe, thousands of miles away. When other teenagers were engrossed in listening to the jukebox and jitterbugging, I focused on the war in Europe, the fate of my family and America's response.

The Nazi blitzkrieg with its speed and efficiency had stunned an isolationist land. Now England was under attack day and night by German bombers and barely managed to survive. What if the Germans invaded England? America was re-arming, working seven days a week around the clock. There was a big debate as to whether the U.S. should enter the war on the side of the allies. President Roosevelt announced the buildup of the peacetime army, an act that assured me that he understood the situation in Europe. We looked forward to letters from our parents, to get their support and to miss them less. . .

Soon after, I was seated in the vehicle driven by a soldier from the motor pool. For the next few minutes we traveled south on the Autobahn. As the Mercedes turned east, the foothills of the Black Forest came into view. I loved the familiar panorama, the profile of the dark mountain range with the village below, topped by the red sandstone steeple of the Catholic Church. We crossed the Karlsruhe-Ratatt spur of the railroad and entered the western part of Malsch on the Bahnhofstrasse, a strip I had walked hundreds of times to catch my train to school. I got excited when we rolled past Der Adler (The Eagle) restaurant where Father used to play cards with his Jewish friends on Saturday afternoons, much to Mother's dismay. She didn't approve of card playing for money on the Sabbath even though the stakes were minuscule, amounting only to a few Pfennigs.

. . . I expected that my presence, a lone American soldier walking their streets, would interest the villagers, but no one approached me to inquire about the reason for my presence. They kept their distance, just as they had behaved in the Nazi years whenever a Jew was subject to public abuse. If I wanted attention I had to pose the questions and to identify myself. I was annoyed that I was unrecognized and ignored, yet pleased that I was free to wander incognito. I had no difficulty identifying familiar sights: the brown sandstone church steeple, the bridges over the brook, and the statue of Sankt Nepomuk—a Catholic saint I had always thought had a stupid look—but the people I encountered were strangers. In this initial walk I didn't see one familiar face. I had departed in August 1940, five years and seven months earlier. That's not a long time, yet it felt as if decades had passed. No, I had not been asleep for 20 years, but the events of the past half a dozen years had brought major changes to my former home and to its people as well as, undoubtedly, within me. Not unlike Rip Van Winkle, I recognized the houses along the way, the turns of the road, even the paving of the streets—cobblestone, granite, dirt or macadam. Everything was as I remembered, undamaged by the war.

. . . I looked forward to my visit and expected to get answers and some items my parents had left in trust with the Hornungs. I walked up the half dozen steps to the entrance. There, next to the door was a familiar sight, clogs with wooden soles and leather tops worn by the Hornungs when working in the stable and yards. Inside the house family members only wore wool socks. I knocked. Rosel, the youngest daughter, a blue-eyed blonde with a hooked nose, opened the door. "Ludwig!! that must be you," she said, inviting me into their foyer. Her mother wanted to know who had entered. "It's Maier's Ludwig," Rosel informed her. When I came face to face with Mrs. Hornung, then a woman in her late 50s, she shook her head saying, "des is doch net der Ludwig (that can't be Ludwig)." Only after we had exchanged further phrases in the local dialect did she acknowledge that the young man in the American uniform could be the former neighbors' son. Perhaps my appearance was like that of an unwelcome ghost, returning to collect my family's belongings.

As we moved toward the kitchen we passed the living room on the right and I caught a glimpse of a resplendent Christmas tree. Rosel saw my eyes examine the decorations and suggested, "Ludwig, why don't you have a look, we are late in taking it down. Remember when you and your sister used to help us trim the tree?" I still could recall the exciting hours spent hanging the colorful glass bulbs on its branches, clipping on tin candleholders and inserting the many colored candles. "Yes," I told her, "and you always let me put the angel up on top."

. . . We moved on to the table in the kitchen, where I had spent many hours. The black bakelite radio still sat on its perch. I could hear Hitler's scratchy voice spewing forth his diatribes attacking the Jews and the allies and remembered my discomfort sitting at that table and listening to the Fuhrer's admonitions. Now I appreciated that the radio sat silent. Herr Hornung joined us. We had not been in touch since 1941 and much had happened during the past five years. The dark-haired daughters, Lina and Emma, now were married. Lina, the oldest of the girls had married a Rexer son and they owned the inn near the railroad station. Everyone had survived the war. They must have surmised that my parents were not alive, but asked nevertheless. My blunt answer was: "They were killed at Auschwitz." I don't know if the sound of my voice and the brevity of my response stopped this topic. Did it indicate a sense of sympathy, sensitivity or shame? As I heard myself speak, I was surprised at the hard and clipped sound of my response.

"What happened to Agathe and you after you left here?" they wanted to know, in an effort to distance themselves from the painful topic. Was Agathe working, or still in school? I told them about our trip to America, our foster parents, the schools. They talked about Otto, son of Pius, a playmate of Agathe's, and his apprenticeship at the Mercedes plant, and answered my questions about the people in the village. Some of the Nazi leadership had been jailed. Based upon his good standing in the Party, my former teacher Herr Bock had become the school principal during the war and was now spending time in the American jail in Ludwigsburg. When I attended the local elementary school, Bock had been the Nazi indoctrinator. On the morning of Kristallnacht he had led his class of students to the three-story house occupied by the Lob family, urging them to throw stones at the Jewish enemy.

They talked about the food and clothing shortages during the past five years. I knew that food was still in short supply even with the end of the war nine months earlier. They had always been quite self-sufficient with their small vegetable garden, the pigs, the goats and the flock of chickens. The Hornungs had several acres with turnips and potatoes and a small vineyard which supplied them with wine. Perhaps they had not had the variety of food of the prewar years, but I was sure they didn't go hungry.

I didn't mention the hunger our parents faced in France nor did I ask what happened to Mother's dozen chickens left in our house. In those early hours of my visit with my former neighbors I was so happy with the reunion that I pushed aside many bitter memories. It felt as if we were celebrating my triumphant return and our mutual survival. They had managed to get through the war unharmed and I had returned in the uniform of the victorious army, and the pain of my parents' killing receded briefly.

. . . Herr Hornung presented a small, wooden cigar box which came from our house. It contained photos I had taken with the camera given to me in 1937 on the occasion of my Bar Mitzvah. To my surprise it also held the letters and post cards I had sent to my parents prior to their deportation to France in October of 1940. There were post cards and letters from Berlin, from Vilna, Minsk and Moscow and all along the Trans-Siberian express. My parents had saved them all, my correspondence from Manchuria and Japan and mail after our arrival in America. In addition to my correspondence, there were letters from my sister as she made her way to America and Jewish New Year's greetings from relatives in Germany. There was a note from the social agency representative in Berlin announcing that my sister and I had arrived safely in America. However, there were no letters from my parents from France. I knew that they had written to the Hornungs but never received an answer. I didn't ask our neighbors if they received such mail.

. . .Next morning as I got ready to leave for my rendezvous with the driver to return to Karlsruhe, she [Rosel] handed me a letter to my sister which conveyed the feelings encountered on my first return to my home village after a five-year absence and the losses of people near and dear to me.