A Puzzle of Papers

I guess when you are in a prison and have few possessions, pieces of paper become treasures on which to make important notes, and read again and again. Maybe that why going through my father’s World War II material, I’ve found so many little slips of paper, notes of names and numbers, hand written calendars on the backs of cigarette packages, and messages that must have been passed from barracks to barracks. Not to mention the dozens of photographs that record my parent’s World War II experience.

I am staring at several boxes of the things they saved, amazingly in good condition even through many moves and 70 years of less-then-archival conditions. I am overwhelmed, and at the same time, I am spellbound with the stories this material holds.

For instance, I found on the back of a torn Lucky Strike wrapper, an autograph of Max Schmeling, a German boxer who was the heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. Tiny notes on the bottom indicate that he signed the wrapper in Barth on April 3, 1945, just as the Germans were about to lose the war. I wonder what the significance of his visit was; he was thought to be a puppet of the Nazis. His two fights with Joe Louis in 1936 and 1938 were worldwide social events because of their nationalities. And then I found a photo clipped from a magazine with two boxers in a ring in September 1944 taken at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth. My father and his friend Red are in the background.

There’s the piece of German toilet paper. And many labels from the Red Cross packages. And the letters from my mother. There are photographs of the camp and the Russians. I would later learn that a lot of the photos were taken by my father with a camera he got from a German for cigarettes.

My father kept a day-by-day diary of the days in the camp just before and after the war was won in Europe. In addition to all that was going on at the time, he lists what he ate at many of his meals. There is much more. I hope that I can piece together all of this into one coherent story that my children and grandchildren will appreciate.

My father talked very little about his World War II experiences, really just the basic facts of dates and places. I guess that there are places in this memory he didn’t want to visit again. But he must kept all these treasures for a reason. He must have felt this was a significant point in his life. His World War II papers have built a giant puzzle. And I hope to solve it one piece at a time.