from the prologue
                 A war on the scale of the Second World War has never been fought on North American soil. For this reason, many people in North America do not really understand what it is like to live in a country where such battles take place. The terrorist attack of September II, 2001, although a horrifying event, pales in comparison with the destruction and death that takes place in war-torn countries. North America has been and is again at war, but while the soldiers are away fighting, the ordinary citizens-men, women, and children-are safe and secure at home, unlike the inhabitants of those countries un:der attack or occupied by the enemy. More than fifty million people died during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, and the majority were innocent victims ~ not soldiers, but civilians!
                 I am no longer a boy. My brother passed away a few years ago and my mother died in 1994 at the age of ninety-four. Each letter she had received from my father while he was incarcerated in a concentration camp was carefully saved in a little jewellery box. As an adult, I made several attempts to read those letters. I would unfold one of them and start reading, but after a few sentences, overcome with emotion, I had to fold it again and put it back into its little box. When my mother passed away, I inherited the box with its treasured contents. Finally, I found the courage to read them. That's when I decided that it was time to share my story, the story that has been locked up in my memories for so many years.
                 Tens of thousands of people have their own tales. So many have lived through similar circumstances, so many children and their parents have suffered dreadfully ~ yet, in spite of it all, tried to live as normally as possible ~ in their war-torn country.
                 This is my story.
 

sono nis publisher

from the epilogue
                 This combustible mixture of maniacal leadership, economic factors, and social pressures-the fuel that feeds the fire that cooks. up war-can occur at any time in any nation, amid any race. It is happening today in the Middle East.
                 Wars have been waged since the beginning of time. In the early days we fought with stones and sticks, then with swords and spears. Now we are much more sophisticated and use bullets, bombs, and nuclear weapons. Will we ever learn? I am typing this into a computer, a clever machine that enables people all over the world to talk like neighbours. How is it possible that despite all our present knowledge, when it comes to dealing with other groups we still revert to the instincts and habits of the Stone Age?
                 In his letter of May 21, 1944, my father wrote: "People hate each other and they don't even know why." I think that sums it up. We find all sorts of reasons to treat with suspicion people of a nationality, religion, race, or colour different from our own. Yet they are people just like us, people who have the same hopes and needs. We are too afraid, or too greedy or lazy, to share, learn, and discover what we have in common. Instead, we fight: we kill one another, no different from our cave-dwelling forefathers.
                 I ask again: will we ever learn? You will be part of the answer.