My family moved from southeast Kansas to Denver when I was 4. We lived in an apartment for a few months while my folks got oriented, then moved into our own house.

This neighborhood was pretty new, constructed about 5-10 years before. Because it was "new," a lot of people just moving into Colorado settled there. Because it was about 15 years after the Second World War, quite a lot of these people were DPs - Displaced Persons. We would call them "Holocaust survivors" now.

I saw an interview with an elderly woman who had lived through this period. She repeatedly called them "Misplaced Persons." She never corrected her error. I am happy to see that now, if you type "misplaced persons" into Google, all the responses are for "displaced persons." These people were not "lost" (misplaced), they were "moved from another location" (displaced.)

And they were trying to build a new life. In a place they hoped was "safe." But, they remembered they had thought Europe was "safe" too. They had thought their neighbors liked them. They could not trust their own hopes.

None of the people who had experienced the Holocaust were talking about it, especially when kids were around. But we all still picked up things; we knew something just AWFUL had happened to these neighbors, something they just wanted to forget about. We had ideas about what had happened; none of our imaginings came close to the horrible reality.

When planning to move from southeastern Kansas, where my mom was teaching at the college, my mom had applied for a position in a small medical practice. When she arrived in Denver, the other doctors in the practice discovered she was blind. >Poof< the job disappeared.

My mom got a job with our next-door-neighbors the Buchners who made draperies in their converted-to-a-small-factory garage.

So, a blind woman couldn't practice psychiatry, but she could make DRAPES??!

I remember visiting with these neighbors (who were probably in their fifties and seemed ANCIENT to me.) They would be chatting normally, but suddenly one or the other of them would stop, stare off in the distance, obviously seeing something no one else could see. Thinking thoughts they did not want to share. After a moment or two, they would come back to our world and continue the conversation as if nothing had happened. We grew used to this pattern and after a bit didn't find it unusual.

The story in the neighborhood was that this couple had met in a DP camp in Europe, married there, and finally been allowed to come to America. The neighborhood declared they had been "lucky." I think THEY thought they were lucky, too.

The neighbor I called "Uncle Ed" was unusual in that he talked about his war experiences. Uncle Ed was Polish, and as a teenager had joined the Polish Army to fight the invading Germans. They, of course, lost, and Uncle Ed was put into a work camp.

Uncle Ed, too, was "lucky." Hemophilia ran through his family, so he had not been circumcised as a Jewish infant. Because of this, the Germans couldn't tell that he was Jewish, and Uncle Ed was no dummy - he wasn't going to tell them.

He was in the work camp for a short time, and then he saw an opportunity for escape. He did, successfully, and joined the Polish Resistance. His experience of the War was: fighting in the resistance; getting captured; getting sent to a work camp; escaping; fighting in the resistance; getting captured;... (repeat until the War ends.)

He told a funny story to us kids. He was in the Resistance at that time, and they had captured a tank. He was delivering it (solo) to a Resistance cell many miles away by driving it there. He had been awake for more than a day at this point and was REALLY tired. He got out his map and saw that the road ran straight for a long way ahead. He took off his belt and used it to tie the "sticks" used to steer the tank together so it would go in a straight line. He watched to make sure all was working well, then he dozed off.

Crash! Boom! Thud! He awoke with a start. The tank was tipping, tipping; he was falling, falling... Crash! He was stopped.

He turned off the tank, crawled out, and discovered he was underground, under a building.

He found some stairs, climbed up, and found SURPRISE! In this little village, the church was built at the crossroad in the middle of town. The road circled around it. Of course, the map did not show this nuance.

The tank had crashed through the front doors of the church and into the sanctuary. The weight had been too much for the stone floor and it had crashed through and landed in the crypt.

It may still be there...

Uncle Ed faded into the surrounding woods and met up with the local Resistance cell.

Like my drapery-making neighbors, after the war, Uncle Ed got lucky and was able to come to the US. He, of course, spoke not a word of English. Kind people at the Resettlement Center tried to help. They told him he could go to a cafe and order "apple pie and coffee."

He tried it, and it worked!

After a few days, he wanted to expand his diet. The helpful people told him he could order "a ham sandwich." (Of course they knew these people were Jewish and didn't eat ham; they didn't think it mattered.)

So, he tried that: "A ham sandwich!" he ordered triumphantly.

"White or wheat?" asked the waitress.

Uncle Ed stared blankly. He began to panic. Finally, he came up with a solution. "Apple pie and coffee!" he asserted.

Apparently it worked. He got a ham sandwich (probably on white), a slice of apple pie, and coffee.

Life in America was good!

As kids, we used to love watching him eat an apple. He would start eating the apple just like any of us would, but when he got down to the core, he didn't throw it away, like Americans would. He started eating from the bottom of the core and ate EVERYTHING all the way to the top. The only thing he wouldn't eat was the stem.

As a kid I used to wonder if he might have apple trees growing in his stomach from eating the seeds.

I think watching Uncle Ed eat an apple told us kids more about World War II than anything else.

Another neighbor, I never knew his name, I called "the telescope man." He worked at one of the big engineering firms in the area and owned a (pretty big for a private person) TELESCOPE! And HE WOULD LET THE KIDS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD LOOK THROUGH IT!!!

We were overwhelmed by his kindness and patience.

Denver at that time was not light polluted as it is now, so you could actually see stuff in the night sky (now we are lucky to see 5 stars in a summer night...) We saw the Moon with detail we had never seen before. We saw Saturn! We tried to discern the canals on Mars. We saw that Venus had phases like the Moon. We saw Jupiter and its moons - just like Galileo.

While we were "viewing," the telescope man would tell us about space things. The space race was just beginning; we were all sure we would personally walk on the Moon someday. We were fascinated.

But, occasionally, he would allude to his past in Germany. "We should have known. There were clues. We should have been paying attention."

Once I remember he made sure we were all listening. He fixed us with a steely glare. "There are always symptoms. Watch carefully! Pay attention to what is going on. And don't be afraid to jump! Leave before it is too late!"

We were a little uncomfortable. But, deep in our hearts, we believed him. We felt what he said was SOMETHING IMPORTANT.

We all nagged our parents into getting us a bag or suitcase which we kept in our closets. (This was before the time when every child had a backpack.) I made a list of my toys and clothes I would take if we had to flee at a moment's notice.

One of the neighbor kids, about a year younger than I was, REALLY took the warning seriously. She was training herself to eat raw spaghetti. Her reasoning was that she thought she could carry a LOT of raw spaghetti and wouldn't go hungry on her trek.

You could tell where she was in the house by listening for the sounds of hard, painful crunching.

I wonder what her parents thought was going on?

We, of course, did NOT share why we were doing these things with our parents. We feared they might forbid our visits with the telescope man.

I appreciated my friend's planning, but I doubted her solution. I felt raw spaghetti was actually kind of heavy and you really wouldn't be able to carry that much of it, along with your toys and clothes. I opted for something lighter: puffed wheat, which was sold in large plastic bags in the grocery store.

And, I didn't have to train myself to eat it.

It wasn't my favorite breakfast food, but I nagged my mom to buy it for years just in case the apocalypse came.

Again, our parents had NO IDEA. But I think they, too, spent their lives thinking: What if? Maybe they, too, kept lists of What To Take?

I am in my seventies now, and the apocalypse has not yet come. But I still keep a list on my bathroom mirror of what I should take should I need to flee suddenly. My friend works at FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency.) she thinks this is a GREAT idea and that everyone should have such a list. You never know when there might be a flood or a wildfire or an earthquake. You never know when you might have to grab the cat and flee!

Of course, my list no longer includes my toys. It highlights important papers. It starts with cat food, a can opener, a kitty litter box, kitty's favorite blanky, the kitty carrier, kitty's favorite toy.

I don't include puffed wheat on the list.

But, I have a bone to pick with the telescope man: living through the second reign of President voldemorT, I see clues and symptoms every day. I watch as we lose our freedoms and as dangerous policies are enacted.

I AM watching carefully! I AM paying attention to what is going on. But how do you know when to jump? How do you know WHEN to leave before it is too late?

I'm sure people in pre-WWII Europe didn't find these questions easy to answer, either. Probably the telescope man didn't have any advice on that topic and chose to leave it open.

My kids have moved to Canada (my daughter is a person of color and my son is a kippah-wearing rabbi: they were both in danger where they were living in the US and are much safer in Canada. For now...)

For myself, I've seen what it is like to be a Displaced Person. Being in my 70s, I don't rush to embrace the experience.

So the question remains: How do you know WHEN to jump? And, like in 1939, with the world at war, how do you know where to go?

I wish AI could tell me that!