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Survival. Liberation.A New Life in AmericaIn this book, a story is told of how I havelived the past 76 years of my life. I grewup in a rich, affluent environment and afterconcentration camps, ended up starting a happypurposeful life in the United States of America. It is great to be an American.The life is only unusual to the point that I was just a happy kid growing up, goingto school, until the Germans marched into Prague (Praha) on March 15, 1939.This is when everything came to a screeching halt. The first thing they did, if youcan imagine, was to change the traffic pattern, overnight, from driving on the left todriving on the right. The streetcars now had the doors on the wrong side, and thebuses also had to be boarded from the other side. They did this overnight! Thousandsof German soldiers marched up and down the streets and created a lot of chaos, noiseand drew little attention from the Czech people. I had no idea what was going on.The next thing that happened was all 'Jews' were advised of a curfew, which wasafter sundown; and before sunrise, no 'Jew' was allowed on the streets of Praha.Fortunately, I spoke a fluent German, because of my parents who were raised inthe old Austrian Empire. We were told to wear the yellow Star of David with thewords 'Jude' (Jew) on our outer garments. If the soldiers thought you were Jewishand were not wearing the star, you were beaten severely, or even shot and killed. Mysister and I had no idea if we were Jewish; we had to ask our parents.My life then took a twist. The next years, 1939 to 1945, were spent in horrific waysand times, inside the concentration camps. You will find out how I was able to befreed again, return to my homeland, and then immigrated to the United States andlived here since August 5, 1946.I have no regrets about my life, I only wish thatmy family could have lived to an older age, andnot have been slaughtered in the gas chambers!Klaus PollakSeptember 2006
