Reunion by Fred Uhlman: Friendship destroyed by war

The casualties of war go beyond the physical. Those who die, die; but those who survive lose a part of themselves. And oftentimes losing a friend through death or separation is just as painful as losing a limb. People can endure suffering, but like battle scars or stumps, the pain will remain. As the narrator begins the novel: "He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again."

In Reunion by Fred Uhlman, the narrator is 'reunited' with past when he receives a letter from his school in Germany asking him to subscribe to a war memorial for his schoolmates who died during World War II. This triggers him to nostalgia and reminiscence; thirty years ago was a child of Jewish descent living in Germany. Like any child he longs for companionship and finds one in Konradin von Hohenfels, a noble child who becomes his best friend. But their friendship, although sweet, was short -- the rise of the Nazis forces the narrator to flee to the US and loses most of his loved ones in Germany and cuts off his ties to his former homeland.

Then, after thirty years, he gets reminded of his past. For the most part, the recollection is on a nostalgic tone and he recalls the beauty of the land where he spent his childhood. He relishes at the experience of his friendship with Konradin. It bears no details of the suffering the narrator endured, it doesn't delve into the atrocities or the concentration camps, but we feel the pain. We feel the stormclouds moving in, darkening the innocent world of a child, who gets his first taste of racial discrimination when he had to be sneaked into his best friend's house lest the latter's parents be abhorred at the sight of him.

This novella, however short, adds to the vast body of writings devoted to that dark moment in history by offering a different, "minor", equally important, persective of the impacts of war.

Reunion is truly a hautingly moving story. Such is the pain that humans inflict upon themselves that past and present become worlds apart, and reunions of once-greatest friends can only take place in memory.