On the eve of World War II, John Freund was a young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write. In Springs End he recounts with telling detail how his joyful childhood was shattered by the German invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia, in 1939. Like other boys his age, John loved mischief and adventure and he found his greatest pleasure sitting and watching the dozens of trains that rolled through his city of Ceske Budejovice every day. He was only nine years old when, as he puts it, the devil walked in. Hoping at first the conflict and persecution would soon blow over, the Freunds an assimilated Jewish family who identified first and foremost as Czechs suffered through the systematic erosion of their rights before being first deported to the Terezin concentration camp near Prague and then transported to Auschwitz.