Franz found the experience of leaving his homeland easier than he had thought it would be. In Germany, the ghosts of the war were close to home. Whenever a plane flew overhead, Franz thought of his young pilots. He saw the suffering in the eyes of his countrymen. He also remembered how some of them had turned on him. In the forests and camps of Germany, Franz saw the ghosts of the Holocaust, the crimes of the minority that had spoiled every German fighting man’s honor. One German fighter pilot spoke for the fighter forces when he wrote, “The atrocities committed under the sign of the Swastika
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