I have not lived in Germany for a long, long time. However, here in Philadelphia, quite far from the land of my birth, when I turn on my computer every December and search YouTube for “Deutsche Weihnachtslieder”—German Christmas songs—my screen fills with a little church in the mountains of Bavaria, where I grew up during World War II.
 
Snowflakes fall down onto my laptop, church bells start ringing, and a children’s choir sings carols in my mother tongue—and then, something hits me hard every year.
 
The world of my childhood suddenly seems whole and perfect for a few seconds—a few minutes, maybe—with the illusion of peace, harmony, and goodwill for all.
 
But then, reality hits me. 

In 1945, millions of Europeans who lived in London, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Dresden, and other cities that had been bombed into ruins were either killed or trapped in basements—with relatives desperately digging through rubble, trying to find survivors.
 
World War II had thrown millions of people out of their homes all over Europe and turned many survivors into refugees without money, jobs, or hope. Countless people lived in refugee camps, bunkers, in the streets, or in overcrowded places.
 
My father, a young journalist and war correspondent, aged 31, was missing in action.
 
In 1948, an old relative invited my mother, my little sister, and me to share her small, one-bedroom apartment with two other families in Wuppertal, a city near Düsseldorf and Cologne. When we looked out the window, blackened ruins of a once-large apartment building stared us in the face. 

As children, we did not understand the horror behind the destruction. We rejoiced when we heard my mother’s little brass bell that let my sister and me into the festively-decorated room, when we saw the Christmas tree with all its candles burning—initially puzzled why our old, beaten-up tin bucket filled with water was sitting next to the tree—and when we began to sing Christmas songs with our mother and our two grandparents.
 
Soon, my grandmother stopped singing. She took out her little handkerchief and sobbed. Two songs later, my grandfather stopped singing, too. He rubbed his eyes with his big hands, pretending that he had some dust in his eyes. It took me some years before I realized why they stopped singing: both my grandparents had lost their only son, drafted at 17, killed in Russia. 

However, my mother, my sister, and I kept singing.

My father had disappeared in the Soviet Union. None of us knew for many years after the war that Russian partisans had thrown a Molotov cocktail under his car and blown him and his driver up in the summer of 1944. My mother, unaware that she already was a widow, yet filled with fear and apprehension, stopped singing and started to cry.

In spite of all the tears, my little sister and I kept singing, no matter what. We both wanted to save Christmas—Heiligabend after Heiligabend. The same scenario repeated itself every year, way into the 1950s.

And now, a writer and retired professor, I am sitting at my computer in Philadelphia, writing new articles, stories, and plays, and listening with joy and sadness, both tinged with the emotions of those annual family events when we sang Christmas songs in bombed-out Wuppertal during that postwar period. Each December, whether I want it or not, each song brings back lost time and memories of events past.
 
As in all the years before, I fight tears, aware that after all these many decades, I’m still allowed to re-live those Christmas evenings of my childhood whenever snow falls gently onto my computer screen and a children’s choir in Bavaria sings Weihnachtslieder, courtesy of YouTube.​

One thing I know, even when all those of us living today have gone for good, “Stille Nacht,” “Silent Night,” and all the other old Christmas songs will live on—provided we do not destroy our world.
 
Fröhliche Weihnachten, merry Christmas, and a heart full of hope.

​One day, may those who come after us, doing a better job than we did, hand over permanent peace as a present for the generations to come—not just for Christmas, but for life. 

And suddenly it got dark. They heard terrible screams coming from the roof of their wagon, and Martin thought he heard something crashing down. It was like suitcases falling from the roof, but he had not seen any suitcases or trunks, just men crouching on top of the overcrowded train in München. He didn’t know what had happened to them in the tunnel. All he could hear were muffled cries from the people around him, “Oh, mein Gott, oh, mein Gott.” 

And then it became quiet again, except for the metal wheels of the train hitting the rails in the long tunnel.

SUMMARY:

Most Germans who had survived WW II were so poor that they bartered for almost anything, including bread, butter, and shoe polish.  Martin, a little boy who had never seen anyone other than his small family and the people in the Bavarian village where they had taken refuge during the war, discovered the joy of playing with shoe polish and painting his hands, arms, and face, even smearing shoe polish into his hair.  His mother, angry that he had wasted the few old clumps of precious shoe polish which she had managed to get hold of, shouted at him that no humans look black, only scarecrows.  

A few weeks later, when the little boy and his mother were resting by a lake, a tank of American soldiers stopped at the embankment above, and threw gifts for the little boy and his sister.  Little Martin, thrilled about the experience, even though puzzled that he couldn't understand the soldiers, begged his mother to ask the soldiers whether they could give him some of their black shoe polish which, from his perspective, they must have smeared all over their hands, arms, faces, and hair.  He cheerfully waved at the African-American soldiers whom he considered his new friends and fellow scarecrows. His mother, aghast, tries to pull her son away.

EXCERPT:

He woke up with his mother shrieking like a madwoman. She had come back from milking the cows and was so upset when she saw her son all blackened that she spilled some of the milk onto the floor by accident. Milk swirled around dried old clumps of black shoe polish, creating patterns on the floor she had never seen. Within seconds, the rented room on the farm looked worse than ever before.

“What have you done, what have you done?” she screamed.

“You look like a scarecrow. No mensch looks like that,” she almost cried with anger, “no mensch looks like that, not one – only scarecrows, black scarecrows.”

She hit him over the head, accidentally knocked over the milk jug fully, and started to cry.

“My blonde little son has become a black scarecrow. How terrible!” She cried uncontrollably.

He woke up with his mother shrieking like a madwoman. She had come back from milking the cows and was so upset when she saw her son all blackened that she spilled some of the milk onto the floor by accident. Milk swirled around dried old clumps of black shoe polish, creating patterns on the floor she had never seen. Within seconds, the rented room on the farm looked worse than ever before.

“What have you done, what have you done?” she screamed.

“You look like a scarecrow. No mensch looks like that,” she almost cried with anger, “no mensch looks like that, not one – only scarecrows, black scarecrows.”

She hit him over the head, accidentally knocked over the milk jug fully, and started to cry.

“My blonde little son has become a black scarecrow. How terrible!” She cried uncontrollably.

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