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�To No Man�s Glory� Photo by Jim Craven By Bill Varble Vincent Benson remembers the mushroom. It was a gigantic fungus he found as he was foraging in the woods of Latvia in the waning days of World War II. He was Arturs Lejnieks then, a Jewish boy hiding from Hitler�s soldiers. The miraculous find helped him and his friends cheat death for another day. Half a century later, he has no doubt the mushroom was providential, a sign of God�s grace. "I was there," he says with a level gaze and the least hint of an accent. "You know." After a lifetime of silence, Benson, 66, has dug deep into his past. The result is "To No Man�s Glory," a Holocaust memoir written with his wife, Victoria. "It�s hard for him to talk about it," Victoria Benson says. "Doing the book helped him; it�s intended to be a healing journey. " Victoria started encouraging Vincent to dredge up his wartime memories three years ago. The two would match his recollections with the chronology of the war in Eastern Europe. At first he concentrated on facts and impressions. Emotions followed. "It was like going through a cesspool," he says. One night he�d been dreaming and found himself at the window of the couple�s Medford apartment looking for invading tanks. "There were a lot of tears," Victoria says. "There was a lot of releasing," Vincent says. The self-published book is available for $14.95 at Evangel Bookstores, at www.bn.com or by e-mailing: [email protected] Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin occupied Latvia in 1940 after the Soviet Union�s non-aggression pact with Germany, but Hitler invaded the Baltic states in June 1941, double-crossing Stalin. Arturs was 3, his mother dead of an illness, his father dead or missing. He says he fled German soldiers with a woman he knew as "Auntie." He remembers tanks, bullets, snow, a ragtag group deciding to split up, a tall man saying, "Jews, go with her. Others, come with me." He remembers the smell of the fields of the decaying dead. In 1941, fanatical Nazi Reinhard Heydrich took over the machinery of the Nazis� "final solution" _ the extermination of the Jews _ in Eastern Europe. German bombing in December devastated the ghetto of Riga, Latvia, and soldiers with help from Latvian "patriots," or Nazi sympathizers, marched survivors into the Rumbuli forest to open pits and gunned down thousands of men, women and children. Vincent Benson remembers learning that the people in his little band, himself included, had eaten a stray dog he�d befriended. Captured by the Germans, he spent more than a year in a holding camp for women and children. Strictly speaking, it wasn�t a death camp. ut people taken out didn�t return. The Allies� long-awaited invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, began the end of Hitler�s Thousand Year Reich. It also made the Nazis desperate to complete their "final solution." Arturs was marched into the woods by the Gestapo. He and his auntie somehow escaped. By the time the Russians invaded from the East, it�s estimated that about 150 Jews remained alive in Latvia out of more than 70,000 at the start of the war. The Bensons know some may find it difficult to accept as accurate memories from so young an age. Their answer is that if there are errors in the account, they won�t affect history, nor will they change Vincent�s life. Arturs joined refugees in the Latvian port of Liepaja, made his way onto a German ship and became a displaced person in Germany after the war. He was relocated to the United States, where he was adopted and grew up on a farm near Hinton, Iowa. As he grew he found conflict with his stepfather. "He didn�t accept me the way I was," he says, shaking his head. "He wanted me to be like him, not like the rest of the �damn Jews.� " Benson served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army in the 1950s and saw a Germany risen from ashes. He joined the Worldwide Church of God, a church of which his Lutheran stepfather disapproved. He was given a choice: give up his church or his inheritance. He moved to Oregon in 1962, settling in Eugene to work in mills and logging and landscaping. "I had a good life," he says. He moved to the Rogue Valley in 1986. The Bensons met at a church outing in 1994. When she asked where he was from, he didn�t say Iowa, as he sometimes told people, but Latvia. "She was interested," he says. They were married a year later. He says he�s forgiven his stepfather. He�s disturbed by indifference to the Holocaust, an attitude of, "oh, that�s war." He believes his memories, and he believes in miracles. "We need to respect each other," he says. "Live peaceably with one another. Can you imagine a world without war?" 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