My grandpa was born in Le Havre in 1924. The small maritime city set on the northwestern shore of France was largely destroyed during World War II, and grandpa was captured a bit after the German invasion.

The Nazis sent him to a labor camp in Norway. They needed young strong workers while trying to acquire so called heavy water (deuterium oxide) to produce nuclear weapons. It was a camp in the small town of Årdal at the very end of the fjord Årdalsfjorden. A beautiful place that I’ve visited many times growing up, set far in the mountains of Sogn and Fjordane county. The camp is still to this day not listed as a death camp and operated under Organisation Todt which was a Nazi engineering group.

During a transport from Årdal to the groups headquarters - the so called Einsatzgruppe Wiking in Oslo - grandpa and nine other french prisoners managed to escape. First they hid on a food transport, then started hiking across the mountains to reach Sweden, that was still unoccupied. They would sleep during the day and trek at night with the cover of darkness. Alistair MacLean stuff. Crazy.

When they finally reached a hospital in the province of Dalarna in Sweden, grandpa had the good sense to stay put and not immediately return home. He told me he just ate for a year straight. Potatoes, vegetables, chicken, whatever they gave him.

Grandpa loved a good joke. He knew thousands. They were short jokes. Super funny of course. (At least grandpa thought so.) He used to laugh super hard at his own jokes. He would laugh like that “Spanish Laughing Guy” on YouTube. Makes you think. When was the last time you heard a good joke? Or better yet, told one?

He also had stories. Real stories from the war. And these were not funny. They usually spilled out during Christmas dinner. He’d tell us about the poor conditions in the camp. About a specific incident or person. Someone called Firscht or Fürst or something, who was a “full blown Nazi” and would do horrible shit. Like when grandpa had a bad tooth and they just held him down and pulled his teeth out. One by one. With no anesthesia. Until they got the bad one. Fucked up.

As a kid, I remember thinking how badly I wanted to see Hitler dead. Or better yet, to kill him myself. Hang him. Shoot him. Poison him.

I could literally think of a thousand deaths for him.

In this book you will find a bunch of them.