After several days of visiting, Jim decided to report to German authorities at the City Hall in Erlangen to avoid getting into trouble with the government and bring any further hardship on his family. The authorities directed him to return to the reorganized supply battalion to which he had been attached to as a refugee laborer when he was wounded. By now, the battalion was supposed to be somewhere in Czechoslovakia.
The whole family set out to accompany Jim for a short distance as he departed. Then came the painful time for him to tell his mother and sisters goodbye. He had a feeling it would be the last time he would see them, and he thought he sensed that they shared this feeling.  

It was a circuitous and uncertain route that Jim Fras, the young Russian refugee conscripted as a laborer by a German supply battalion, would travel in his search for the unit that had been destroyed and then reorganized. He was not enthusiastic about his mission. Like millions of other residents and refugees of Europe, he had had all the war he wanted. He was just going through the motions of complying with instructions of the German authorities because they controlled the destinies of his mother, his two sisters, his niece, and his nephew, at least for now.
Moreover, Jim did not know how far the Russian army had advanced or where its soldiers might be when he reached the German supply battalion in Czechoslovakia. He did not want to meet up with Russian troops under any circumstances, for to do so and be discovered, would portend his own personal doom. He had committed an unpardonable crime against the ruling authorities of his native land by leaving the country to search for his family and by doing work, whether by conscription or not, for a German military unit.

May 15, 1925 - September 9, 2002

In Memory Of Jim W. Fras

      

The Next Chapter -  page one

Jim's final destination of Erlangen Germany can be seen near the upper left corner of the map shown.

Erlangen is one of the few cities in Germany that survived World War II virtually unscathed.

 

 
Jim wondered how his mother and sisters would react when they saw him. He had written from the hospital, but they didn't know when he might come, if indeed he could get across the border into Germany. The blackout was still in effect when Jim arrived at the camp at the edge of Frauenaurach, a district of Erlangen. As he approached one of the barracks, he saw the dark outline of a girl standing outside. He approached her asking if she knew the people there. Jim could tell she was Russian, so he switched his questioning from the German language to Russian. "Do you know the Fras family?" She did and began leading him to their barrack.
It was an extremely emotional reunion for all after which Jim surveyed the horrible conditions and treatment that his family had been subjected to during the many months in the labor camp. There were so many people of various nationalities confined so closely together that the camp authorities did not know that Jim had joined the Fras family in their barracks. Sisters Tamara and Maria brought small portions of bread and broth from the kitchen where they worked, and Jim managed to sustain himself.