Life on Both Sides of the Wall

Life on Both Sides of the Wall by Gunther F. Skaletz. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780615138206.

At the age of 18, I had already lost all of the people I loved. I was not old enough to make my first communion when I lost my loving mother. My oldest sister, Agnes, at the age of eight (who had taken care of her four little siblings) followed my mother only six months later. My second oldest sister, Maria, was left to care for us at the tender age of seven. Our father struggled daily just fighting to survive, working hard to provide food during the worst depression of our times. My older brother, Bernhard, was then only four, I only 18 months, and my little sister Anna was only 7 months old at the time my mother and oldest sister passed away. Sadly, none of us really got a chance to know neither our mother nor our oldest sister; the only place they can be together or watch over us in heaven. With the eruption of the horrible WWII in September of 1939 and the subsequent invasion of our country Poland by the Nazi army, came the unimaginable and unerbittliche (inexorable) suffering and the subsequent separation from my home and family, I gradually became aware of my true path. In fact, I have been asked many times if I was angry, disappointed, or acrimonious about what has happened to me, the answer would be, only about the fact that I did not have a chance to get to know my biological mother and my sister Agnes. The rest "je ne regrette rien," "I regret nothing."