About now 2 months ago, my grandfather Alois Neuner, or simply Luis Opa as we grandchildren called him, passed away.

I was there with him in his last moments. I nearly did not go to meet him that day. He was allready in a sanatorium for quite a while and me and my family have been visiting him alternatingly in nearly daily intervalls, a COVID-19 necessity. He has been weak for the past few months allready, so he had to spend more and more time in the sanatorium, getting drips of various medications and whatnot.

It was only about a year ago or so that he got a diagnosis of very low levels of white blood cells, as well as some other diagnosis that did not seem right. It was later suspected that he had developed age-related leukemia, and that this was one of the reasons why he was so weak. This also made it harder for him more and more to live his normal daily routine. Which in the end caused him to fall down several times, in one case he bruised his ripps, and in his age this aparently was too much for his body to handle any longer.

So he spent several more weeks bound to a bed most of the time, which was quite a hard time for him, as he had spent so much time in his life being active in so many different sports. The thing though is, he was there mentally pretty much all the time. Forgetfull, yes, but not of the likes somebody with dementia would have. He always recognized us, recalled so much of the past and all, kept telling us of things of his life until the very end.

Only on the last day he was barely even conscious. As I said, I nearly did not go to meet him that day, but then on a whim decided to go, me, my father and my grandfather's girlfriend (not his wife). He was having troubles breathing nearly all the time as I was there, and I then there decided to tell my mother, his daughter, as well as my siblings to come there and then as quickly as possible. I kept on holding his hand, trying to give him any kind of signal to tell him he was not alone, that the ones he loved and cared for were there at his side.

And we were there, until the very end. My mother and siblings arrived just a few minutes after he had passed away. It was...I dunno how to describe it all. My memories of this day and event are very clear, yet my emotions from it were scrambled all the way. We all cried, we hugged, we just were there for each other in that very moment.

The sanatorium's chaplain then also was there for us, and she was surprised that we did all say our last good byes to him. She told us many other people neither had the strength nor the courage to do so. She spoke a last non-religious prayer for him and I think a short song too as we said our last farewell to him.


Luis Opa was a remarkable person. Strong, independent, silly and goofy at times. Somebody who had travelled the world, seen so much and lived through so many things.

As a child of the 30s, he of course went through all the horrors of the second world war. Yet up until last year, we did not know what he had truly lived through.

You surely know that Austria back then was part of the German Reich, and thus pretty much all kids were strongly encouraged to join either the HJ, the Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth) or the BDM, Bund Deutscher Mädel (German Girl's association). My grandaunt who has passed away a few years earlier was not part of the BDM, but my grandfather was in the HJ.

His home city of Innsbruck was not targetd by aerial attacks until very late in the war, and as a meassure to protect children, the HJ told parents that they would send the young boys to towns and villages and camps in the side valleys where they would be safe from the bombing.

This was a lie.

Luis Opa never really told anybody about this, because he was afraid if anybody found out about the events that unfolded then, it could have bad consequences to his family.

Aparently the boys were not sent to these side-valleys, but instead were handed over to either the Waffen SS or the Wehrmacht (cannot recall, would have to ask my mother for that) and were sent to a military camp in Bavaria. There these kids would have been drilled to be soldiers, pilots, or military administrators for the time after the 'Endsieg' , the final victory.

Can you imagine this? This was in mid 1944. At this time the allies were coming in from all sides, and these maniacs and fanatics were still fantasizing about winning the war. Now there were hundreds of young boys aged 12/13 - 18 or so, doing various kinds of trainings. Getting up at like 6 am, a common shower room with ice cold water, then military style breakfast, weapons training and so forth, the whole thing, only that they were just teenagers. They apparently all even learned English because that would be needed if they wanted to occupy the British Isles. Just insane.

I think he also mentioned that the camp was attacked a few times from the air the closer the frontline came, but I could be wrong there. What I know is that he stayed in that camp until pretty much a few weeks before the surrender of the German Reich. Then the camp was discovered by US soldiers, who were totally stunned to find a camp that was filled with adolescents of all ages, most of them fluent in English. They pretty much did not know what to do with all these children and teenagers. They were no Prisoners of War, yet also not really civilians either, so they just kept them all at the camp, under the guard of American GIs.

Then after the surrender of Germany, the US army decided that they would bring all the kids back to where they came from. They loaded them all onto their army trucks and drove them back. My grandfather was in the same truck with some of his school friends, so he at least was with somebody he knew. Then when they arrived back at Innsbruck in the city center, the GIs ordered the kids to just get out of the trucks and wait for more orders, as they soldiers wanted to get in contact with the local authorities.

As you can imagine, hundreds of teenagers who have not seen their homes and families for a year or even longer were hard to hold back, so they just ignored the US soldiers and hopped out of the trucks and spread around, running away back home. There was nothing really much the US soldiers could do about this, there was no training or manual for them how to handle hundreds of children in such a situation. So they all got away.

Stil, the state was allready occupied by US, and later French troops, so all the kids either got rid of their uniforms they were wearing or ripped of any visible insignia. As my grandfather had no papers about his identity, or even money, they were afraid they would be arrested. Remember, he was barely 15 years old at that time. My grandfather and his family were bombed out at this point, their house in Innsbruck having received a direct hit during an aerial bombing, so they were living at a relative's place in a village outside of Innsbruck, the very same village I am living in right now.

He and a friend or two went straight through the woods to the village to avoid any kind of road blocks or controlls by the occupying forces, and they managed to finally get back to their families. It seems nobody really asked how he came back, or maybe he made up a story, I don't know that part. But I do know he has never ever told anybody a word about this part of life until last like late 2019, fearing that if the allies or later the Austrian government would find out he was being trained by the Reich to be pretty much a child soldier that it could have severe repercussions. So he kept quiet.


I don't want to delve much further into his life here now. Just a few things here, that I want to speak about that he told me about his life.

He was a very active person, always has been. Played tennis, went skiing every winter whenver possible, swimming, gymnastics. He was an avid pilot, flew various models of machines, participated in competitions both in Western Europe and even in Eastern Europe, I think in Poland.

He told us various funny and also impressive stories of his times as a pilot, as well as things he experienced with his pilot friends. Like aparently one time he flew in a large cog for a ski lift in the area. A thing totally unimagineable and surely even illegal today. But back then there were less regulations or even possibilities to control such things. So he loaded that cog into his airplane, took off, flew a few minutes out of town and landed on the skiing slope to deliver that spare part.

Another story I recall was where he and a friend of his were in the US on vacation and for some reason the two decided to go into a local recruitment office for the US armed forces, pretending to be interested in joining. Though they pretty quickly realized they were not US citizens and just wanted to prank them, but instead of showing them the way out or such, they started to talk instead, about the armed forces, what's different to Austrian forces and all, and only then did my grandfather's friend tell them that he had served in the Wehrmacht and aparently ended the war with being a middle level officer. In fact his rank was comparably higher than all the recruiters in that office. So when they heard his rank, they to the surprise of my grandfather and his friend saluted him, not as a joke, but saluted him seriously. Aparently back then (dunno how that would play out now) rank meant rank, no matter in what armed forces you served.

Yeah, he has travelled to so many places. Many many places in the United States, he was on vacation with my mother in India, went to a trip in China, pretty much all over Europe, many trips there via airplane.


I am really happy to have had him as my grandfather. He was truly there for me, curious about my interests, many of which we shared, like history and flying machines of all kinds. He taught me how to play tennis, we did so when I was a pre-teen. I can still recall the scent of the tennis court, how the red dirt felt beneath my tennis-shoes or how the tennis racket felt in my hand, and after each play he'd buy me a specific sort of ice-cream at the tennis house there. He also helped me with skiing properly, going to various places with me to go on skiing trips. I also remember fondly the many times he took me and my siblings to go for a swim at lakes and public pools.



There is surely so much more that I could remember now, or would only remember if I looked at old photographies, but that would be too much here now.

I just...wanted to share a bit of these memories with you all here, to share what I experienced, and thus make him live on a bit longer, spreading his experiences more throughoug space and time.



Thank you, Luis Opa. Thank you for everything you did for me and told me and taught me.

You will be in my heart forever.