I Remember

A German teenager's harrowing journey through the final days of World War II and his subsequent immigration to America forms the core of this powerful memoir, tracing a life forever marked by the trauma of being a child soldier on the collapsing Eastern Front. The narrative moves from his induction into the Wehrmacht's Panzer Corps at fifteen, through the visceral terror of combat and a wounding that sent him home to a ruined Ulm, to the profound cultural displacement of arriving in New York as a young man in 1948. This is not a story of high command or political ideology, but a raw, ground-level account of survival and the struggle to rebuild a life shattered by a conflict he was too young to fully understand.

What distinguishes this personal history is its unflinching perspective from a generation of Germans who were both perpetrators and victims, forced to carry the burdens of a war started before they came of age. Readers drawn to firsthand accounts of wartime survival and the complex process of post-war immigration will find a compelling, human-scale story in these pages. The author's philosophical reflections, hinted at through his academic pursuits in America, add a layer of depth to his recollections, making this a memorable contribution to the literature of World War II memory and the immigrant experience.