With the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II the last of that generation who lived through it are slowly departing the stage. Otto Gaczol and his life were profoundly shaped by that war. As an ethnic German boy who grew-up in pre-war Poland he lived through the Nazi occupation just 30 kilometres away from Auschwitz and then in January 1945 fled west as a 14-year-old refugee when the Red Army turned the tide against the Wehrmacht and made its way to Berlin. As a young adult he took advant