Stories from a Blue Bag

In the summer of 1933, Karl J. Volk was sent from the United States to live with family members in Germany because his parents "could not cope with a baby in their lives." Little did they know that a dictator named Adolf Hitler had just attained power several months before. For the next eight years, Karl lived in a small village with an aunt and uncle before moving to Aschaffenburg, where he lived with a different aunt and uncle. The bombing by Allied planes in 1945 cut his time there short. In 1946, at the age of fourteen, Karl returned to the United States not understanding English, and living with parents and a sister he barely knew. This is the story of his early life in both countries.