Thank you: (In remembrance of June 6, 1944)

By Alfried Keller-Maag, CH 845T Humlikon,Switzerland

I was only a young schoolboy then, living on a small farm in northern Switzerland, very near to the German border - but I shall never forget that bright summer morning, June 6, 1944. We had to rise early in those days during haymaking-time. Our older brothers were away in the army, guarding our country against the dreaded Nazi-Germany, so we children had full days of farm work to do.

Coming from the bedroom into the hall, which was lit by the first rays of the rising sun, I froze on the last steps of the stairs:
"The invasion has begun: Allied forces are landing in the Normandy:" Intensely I listened to the news which the radio in the living room was announcing loudly. And ever since, the fragrance of fresh hay, on a bright summer morning, brings vividly back to my mind the immense feeling of relief which I experienced then, on that early morning 50 years ago.

It was finally happening: For over four years I had faithfully prayed for the victory of the Allies, prayed with compassion for the civilian and military victims of the despised Germans. And now suddenly an end came in sight, an end to the suffocating fears which had clouded so many days of my early childhood: Switzerland had been completely surrounded by the arrogant Nazi-Germans for years. Living so near the border, the constant threat of beeing [sic] overrun by them like the rest of the continent, the fears of loosing [sic] our homes, our relatives, our freedom, had been very real to us for a long time. And although we, the Swiss, are to some extent related to the Germans by language, we have never liked their boisterous arrogance. And ever since the rising of the Nazis in the early thirties we feared and hated them. -As the youngest of a large family, I was very early confronted with the problems of the pre-war years through the engaged discussions of my older brothers. International politics after the depression, the rising of the fascist- and Nazi-ideologies, and especially the progress of the war after it had finally broken out, were the main topics beeing discussed at the table, during work, on the way to school.