When I first met Hans in 1978, I didn’t immediately grasp the depth of the scars history had etched into his life. He was a man of few words, whose eyes, however, spoke volumes—if one was willing to read them. Today, as the echoes of past mistakes threaten to be drowned out by the currents of right-wing ideology in Germany and Europe, I feel compelled to share his story. It’s not just the tale of a broken man but a warning and a plea to our collective memory. Hans was born in 1926 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, in the industrial heartland of Germany, into a world still reeling from the scars of the First World War. The political and economic instability of the Weimar Republic shaped his early years, a time of turmoil that eventually laid the groundwork for one of the darkest chapters in human history. At 17, as the world plunged once more into the abyss of war, Hans was conscripted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Eastern Front. There, in the icy grip of the Russian winter, he experienced the brutality of war in its most raw form. The injury Hans sustained from a grenade, which tore away a large part of his lung, was just the beginning of a long ordeal. Captured by Soviet forces, Hans was transported to a prisoner of war camp in Siberia, a place synonymous with desolation and harshness. Despite his severe injury and the brutal environment, Hans clung to life with a tenacity that was both remarkable and heartrending. The cold, the hunger, the back-breaking labor—all left marks that never fully healed. The war eventually ended, but Hans’ battle…