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Lockstedter Lager. A training facility for the infamous Brownshirts and later a barracks for slave laborers and prisoners of war, the year I was born, it began to house German and Eastern European refugees.
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 Reportedly the only picture taken of me as a baby. Shortly after it was taken, my mother fled the advance of the Russians in East Germany with my older brother and me. |
The words “Ohne Vati, Without Dad” are inscribed on the back of this photo. My younger brother Rüdiger was born in the camp in 1946. |
The note on the back of this picture also reads, “Ohne Vati, Without Dad.” It must have been taken when my mother, brothers and I were still at Lockstedter Lager.
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Bad Hersfeld as it looked in 1948, the year my family left the refugee camp and settled here. The tower of the old Gothic Stadkirch rises over the town. |
 My brothers and I with our Kinder Mädchen (hired girl) Kristal around the time we arrived in Bad Hersfeld. Kristal later played an instrumental role in our finding a sponsor in America. |
 My father must have taken this photo of my mother, brothers and me around 1950. Life looked promising for us once he had reestablished his dental practice. |
 My younger brother Rüdiger (on the right) and me enjoying breakfast during the one magical vacation my family took to Bodensee, or Lake Constance, in the South of Germany in the summer of 1952. |
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My father, Heinz Sonntag, with his three sons in Bodensee. With the war over, the 1950s promised a bright future for our family. |
Yet another picture of my family at Bodensee, this time with my mother, Gisela Sonntag. |
The VW that my father bought in 1952 was another sign of our improving fortunes. We had it less than a year. |
My mother in the early 1950s, holding her trademark Haus Bergman cigarette.
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Enjoying a party on my twelfth birthday in November 1956. Three months later I said goodbye to all my friends. I am the slender boy third from the right. |
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