The document discusses the life of Ralph Auernig who was born in 1922 in Vermont. He quit school and joined the Navy at age 19, serving during World War II. After the war, he married and worked at a tannery until retiring in 1985. He helped raise his niece after his wife passed away in 1991. The document also provides timelines of major historical events from 1921 to 1989.

6. Each prisoner was supposed to receive a daily ration of 350 grams of bread, half a liter of ersatz coffee for breakfast, and one liter of turnip and potato soup for lunch. Also, four times a week each prisoner was supposed to receive soup with 20 grams of meat. The soup rarely reached the prisoners. Food content ranged from 1,300 calories for light-work prisoners to 1,700 calories for prisoners performing hard labor. The Kapo made sure that the thicker, more nourishing contents from the bottom of the food barrel, were given to his favorite prisoners. Others had to subsist on the watery substance from the top. Prisoners often had dysentery, and swelling of limbs suffering from a sickness known as starvation disease. The SS and the Capos treated them as if they were healthy and so they had to march to work every morning. The SS calculated that a prisoner could exist on the daily food ration for about three months. Then he was supposed to die. http://remember.org/image/index.html

7. www.photographs.dk/

8. www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/thumbnails/

10. I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life. TONI MORRISON, Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998 www.notable-quotes.com