Thomas Gnielka is 15 years old when he is drafted for military service in 1944 along with his classmates from the Kant-Gymnasium in Berlin. After a short training period, these boys are sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau to guard prisoners who are building protective walls for the IG Farben facilities. Here, the child soldiers, as they would be called today, witness the end of the war. Traumatized, they are unable to forget their experiences for the rest of their lives. After the war, Thomas Gnielka processes the horror of what he has seen and experienced into a narrative, which he presents in 1952 at the Group 47. The trauma of Auschwitz remains his theme even as a journalist for the Frankfurter Rundschau. He exposes the scandalous treatment by the Wiesbaden authority for reparations and he also provides files that he received from a survivor of Auschwitz, who carried them with him during the chaos of his escape.