The two-hour notice is unexpected. The Mom, her infant and five-year-old depart their ancestral home in the Carpathian Mountains never to return. A baby carriage, a little Cream of Wheat, diapers, and the clothes on their backs are their only belongings. The approaching enemy is on the move.

They board the cattle-car, wounded soldiers and straw-covered floors. The train stops. Track destroyed. Locomotive whistles the warning. “Run. Run!” A 1000 hp engine roars, machine guns bark, a ditch in the wheat field their only cover. They, their internal and external parasites, are now one.

Struggling to survive and little food take their toll. Babies stop crying.

The refugee camps are gray and crowded. Eyes are sunken. Ribs protrude. Disease spreads. Medicines, non-existent. Surgeries without anesthesia.

Journey’s end is a small room in a bombed-to-hell city. No running water, sewers inoperative. Sirens scream “Air Raid!” Basement or bomb shelter? Think quick! Calculate time and distance. The low droning of approaching motors. Distant explosions are now not distant. Hell is here–then goes away. The art of killing is persistent, the will to live more so.

Christmas Eve is quiet. Mom lights a candle and places an evergreen twig into a tin can. They sing Silent Night. Supper is lentil soup; dessert is one apple, carefully peeled, divided and savored.

They cuddle on a mat and sleep.

The cruel Socialist conqueror arrives. Humiliation, unthinkable cruelty, and political indoctrination follow. The Mom has a Patrick Henry moment “Give me Liberty or Give me Death. She and her kids make a midnight-escape across patrolled no-man’s land to freedom.Looking back on that Christmas Eve, all was well. We were together. We were alive.

–Gus Maroscher, Marion, IL

The above is my brother’s Christmas memory. You can read more about how we survive hell on earth, and come to America to live the American Dream in my memoir, available for purchase here.