Personal Essay: My Childhood Memories Of The Holocaust

I am Werner Katzenstein. I am a fellow that lived in a town called Herleshausen. In my town I was one of two dozen Jewish families there. My family owned a farm there. Farming is what I wished to do when I grew up. I went to public school for a considerable amount of years in my hometown; than I got to go to high school in Eisenach. In January 1933 my life was changed. My father was arrested and held in “protective custody” for several weeks before I got to see him again. The local Nazis also pressured farmers and others to boycott Jewish enterprises. All of these things were happening to us right in our home town by the Nazis. All of this was because the Nazis came to power and were taking our goods from us. Conditions got worse as the years went by, we were having a tough time. In 1935, two years after my father got arrested, they shut down our business and we traveled to the Netherlands. However, once we got to the Netherlands we operated a farm. Afterwards we got admission to England, South America, and Palestine. Then we got US visas. Four years later after we arrived in the Netherlands we transferred to the United States. We arrived in June 1939. There was no doubt that I was going to join the military.
I was shot while fighting for the US Army.
I knew I had to make it back to the battlefield. After the war I was able to go back to my hometown, but all the Jewish families were gone there. I hope this war will never happen again.
Still, I miss my hometown when everything was great. I wish that the Nazis had not risen to power, taken over countries and slaughtered innocent people. I hope that the Jewish families in my home town are still alive and went some place else. I missed being in school and playing with my friends. I miss the Jewish families back home and working on a farm in
Eisenach. Farm in US