As you may have noticed, not many things leave me at a loss for words--this one did

Probably I should just have dumped this on the current READERS' POST. I don't know what to say about this, and I don't expect anyone else to. Somehow, though, I just needed to get it out of MY head.

I have a friend who celebrated his 69th birthday last week, who was born in Belgium and spent the war years (that's World War II to you young-uns) in Cuba--of which he has by far his happiest memories--before the family returned to Belgium after the war.

Just for context, I had no inkling that he was LOOKING for such a thing. He just sent me an e-mail with the subject heading "German bureaucracy" which reads:

"I looked and found on the internet the name, date of birth, date of death in Auchwitz at age 62 of my grandfather...."