Interview by Alexander Kring
My grandfather Erwin Prex was born in 1925. When he turned seventeen in 1942, it did not take long until he was drafted to join the military in Germany. After two months of basic training he was sent to France as an “occupying force” because Germany had already taken over most parts of France. When I asked him for his experiences there he told me that the French civilians were really friendly to them because German soldiers supported them with food. His time there was really easy because there was no resistance he said. Until after the war he had never heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor because there was no TV and he was too concerned about his own future. This sounded a bit cold-hearted but if you are in a war you do not care about things that happen in other countries. He only heard that America joined the war. In 1945 when the Allies reached the French-German border he came into the brutal battle of the “Bridge of Remagen”, the last bridge to go across the Rhine, a big German river. Many soldiers lost their lives but my grandfather was “just” imprisoned. He spent four months in this American prison which was called “Hungerlager Remagen”, translated to “hunger camp”. He said that it was the worst time of his life and he will never forget it. With a height of five feet and ten inches he weighed ninety nine pounds. It took about one year to recover. After the war he also got more news about the Holocaust which he had never really known about like he said. On the question about Hiroshima and Nagasaki he answered that he cannot judge it because he does not have the background knowledge but he described it as a shocking event that will hopefully never reoccur again. In addition he said after euphoria at the beginning of the war it became a total catastrophe. There were just destroyed cities left and most people lost everything. Also, most young men were stripped of their youth. But what was the most shocking thing, he told me, is that there were people after the war that were honestly revoked everything that happened that even includes the Holocaust.