Saul Goldman (The War That Came Early)

Saul Goldman was a young adult German Jew that lived in Münster along with his father Samuel, mother Hannah and younger sister Sarah at the outbreak of the Second European War in 1938. Since the Goldmans were assimilated Jews, he did not receive a very religious education.

Saul was tall and athletic, with a great talent for playing football. Nazi racial laws, however, forbade him from playing in a team of his level and forced him to waste his talent in a teenage Jewish league too far beneath it. This left Saul bittered with the Nazis policies. Still, when war broke out he and his father tried to enlist in the Wehrmacht - but only to be turned down because of their faith.

After the RAF bombed Münster in January 1939, Saul volunteered to serve in a gang of workers repairing street damage. The gang's oversee - a small, plump individual that had lost an arm during the Great War - was ruthless and prone to hit the men with a stick without provocation. One day, Saul got on his nerves and hit back without thinking, killing the oversee with a shovel strike to the face just as his mother and sister happened to be watching. Horrified with what he'd done, he escaped to never be seen in the city again.

Several days later, the Goldmans received a letter from Saul informing them that he had managed to join the Wehermacht under a false identity. They promptly burned it so the Gestapo could not get ahold of their son's whereabouts.