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My Brother
Regrettably, I know more about casual acquaintances at work than do about my brother, Erich. My parents found it too painful to discuss him, and no known photograph of him survived the war.
Erich was a member of an HJ group organized out of Dresden. In the summer of 1944 he was taking part in a field training exercise in the Normandy region. In the days following the invasion his unit was pressed into a kampf group.
The last official word my mother received on Erich was that he was reported missing in action on or about the third week of June.
A month or so later a friend of Erich's who was with him in Normandy, and was home on convalescence leave, encountered my mother on the street and told her Erich was in fact killed in combat sometime around the first week of July.
My mother never heard another word about my brother. Officially or otherwise.
Erich was 14 years old.
Friede, Erich
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Nostradamus predicted this.
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