He woke up a week later, though he did not know the time. He felt strangely stronger. The doctors at the hospital had him hooked up to a IV. He smiled for the first time in years. Slowly over the next few weeks he regained his strength through a better diet and clean water. A translator was sent to him and told him what was going on. The Americans had won the war. Hitler had committed suicide and the third Reich had fallen.

            Forty years later Paul finally stumbled across what happened to his father. Paul’s father had been sent to a camp much like Paul had. His father had survived to and moved to America and become a citizen. He had become a college literature professor reverting back to his days when he owned a book store. Paul discovered his father’s fate when he was watching the news one day. Paul had also become a United States citizen after the war. He saw that there had been a shooting on a college campus in Virginia. He turned the volume up on his television and watched. When the news anchor started talking about a man who had heroically sacrificed his life so that his students could escape out a window Paul began to cry. There on the TV was a picture of his father, now deceased. He knew it was his father even though it looked like a very different man. He was proud to be who he was. His father had saved the lives of his students just like the American soldiers so many years ago had saved Paul’s. He glanced down at the numbers still crudely engraved on his forearms and continued to cry.