LV Vet Roundtable to Host Hitler Youth Who Survived Dresden

If you like the History Channel, you'll love the LV Vet Roundtable. Military history buffs like Paul Fiske and Mike Sewards are collecting the fascinating stories of the men and women who served in our military, especially WWII vets.

Last year, I had the honor of listening to Emmaus Everyman Bob Kauffman share his experiences as an 18 year-old replacement who was thrown up against Germany's most elite combat unit, the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. "We got the crap kicked out of us," this unsung hero bluntly admitted. Kauffman has also written a book about his combat experience, The Replacement.

If you have time on Thursday night at 7 PM, drop by the Lehigh County Senior Center. This month's guest, like my father, endured the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Today, he's the Reverend Dr. Manfred Bahman, the pastor of St. Joseph Lutheran Church in Allentown.

When Dresden was being fire-bombed, my father was a POW, cowering inside a slaughterhouse with author Kurt Vonnegut, who later wrote Slaughterhouse Five. As the bombs began to explode around them, Vonnegut claims that one of them wisecracked, "I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight." I am certain the source of that dark humor is my father.

Unlike my father and Vonnegut, Dr. Bahman was a member of the Hitler Youth, and his father was a Nazi.

Dr. Bahman's story is one I'd never miss.