Even crappy would be sugar coating it, that's what Helmut Sonneberg says when he gets asked how he is.
Sonny is a bit of a rogue, but there is no need to worry. He is an amazingly fit and healthy 90-year-old. He is a warm-hearted, sensitive guy.
Sonny and I first met six years ago in his hometown of Frankfurt for a report on away game supporters over the age of 80. He launched into a passionate rant that took about three minutes to complete. I described him as the Julius Caesar of grouchy pensioners and he liked it.
Do you know what the hardest punishment would be for me? I am told to keep quiet.
Sonny's life story might have left him so, but he is anything but embittered.
Sonny is a survivor of the Holocaust. He did not talk about the suffering he experienced at the hands of the Nazis, even with his closest friends and family.
That changed a few years ago. He found the words because of his passion for football and Eintracht Frankfurt.
Kristallnacht happened on the night of 9 November 1938. The Nazi regime and its supporters destroyed the homes and shops of Jews in Germany.
A seven-year-old boy named Sonny. His father left shortly after Sonny was born, but his mother was Jewish.
He was the son of a man who was not Jewish. He did not know about his birth father. He found out that night.
The family watched as the synagogue went up in flames and Sonny's mother couldn't tell him the truth. Sonny was told that he was different to the rest of his family, that his father was a Jew, and that he himself was a Jew.
The woman explained that Jews are people who go to the synagogue.
Sonny was taken away from his family and placed in an orphanage. He had to wear a yellow star that said he was an enemy of the people. He was spat on.
He would hear the horrible chants of the Hitler Youth. They were encouraged to beat the Jewish children. The books brought by his half- sister gave Sonny the only relief in his world.
He says that he cried and cried. It was my only place of refuge.
When the Gestapo came for Sonny, his stepfather was against it. He threw down a box of his medals as he demanded that his son be returned.
Sonny was allowed to return home. On the night of 22 March 1944, when the entire old town was destroyed and over 1,000 citizens were killed in Allied bombing raids, he and his family hid on the cellar floor.
Sonny says that war is the worst thing that can happen to the human race. People are lying in the street.
In February 1945, Sonny and his mother were deported to the Czech Republic. His stepbrother could not do anything more. He was forced to take up arms.
Jews were sent to their deaths further east at Theresienstadt.
There were over 50,000 people in a space designed for 4,000.
There was a soup in the morning and afternoon. We only had to eat that. It could be thick, thin, salty or sweet. Every five days there was a special ration of 500g bread, 50g sugar, and 50g butter. It was eaten by 12 if I got that at 11. My mother gave me the same ration.
People were starving to death but it wasn't an extermination camp. It was warm when we were liberated by the Red Army and trains arrived from Auschwitz. They were like cattle cars with people in them. They were just bones. Nothing more.
Some of them lay or knelt. Some people stood up. People who could only move a little.
That image leaves an impression. If there are still people who say that it was made up. I would punch them in the face if I could.
When he was a teenager, Sonny weighed only 4.2 stone and 27 grams.
She wrote in her memoirs that she was afraid she would break him.
Sonny carries Theresienstadt with him in his haunting memories.
He says that people ask him if he can forgive and forget. I can forgive you. I would like to forget. The scars are still there.
Sonny was encouraged to speak about his early life by the director of the Eintracht Frankfurt club museum.
The author of the book was the Jewish boys. It tells the story of Eintracht, his early nickname and the Jewish influence at the club.
When Sonny met Thoma in 2007, he told him that he could tell him something.
Sonny didn't feel ready to speak until 2017. He was invited to speak at an event about fan culture. Sonny made a start, and soon he began to open up more and more.
After the war, nobody talked about it. Nobody asked about it. At that time, you only wanted to live.
Looking back on his life after the Holocaust, it seems like Sonny tried to live as fast as he could.
He worked for the fire brigade, as a taxi driver, and at the airport. Several bars were opened by him. There was a job that brought him great self-esteem, and it was driving a mobile library that helped children from disadvantaged background access reading material.
I had no friends for a long time when I was a child. He says books were his only friends.
There was a game of football. It gave him a taste of freedom. He could play.
After the war, Sonny joined the youth ranks. He put on weight quickly and didn't let the pain of leg ulcers stop him either. He got into Eintracht's second team.
He fell in love with the club. He didn't make it as a player but he was a fan of Eintracht.
Eintracht and Kickers Offenbach played in the 1959 German championship final. Sonny drove a VW Beetle as a fan.
When he and his friends crossed the West German border into East Germany, the customs officials told them not to stop until they reached the capital, but his beer- drinking companions had to pee.
They ran back out of the bushes after the guard shot at them with his rifle.
Eintracht scored two goals in extra time to win the title.
It was Sonny's second family and he had to be there to know what it meant.
It is their only league title. They lost to Real Madrid in the European Cup final before a crowd of 127,000. The Scots are still remembered by Sonny with great fondness.
Gramlich was the chairman at that time. He was the captain of the Germany team at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. The same year he joined the Nazis.
Sonny only found out about Gramlich's background in the late 40s. He stopped being a club member.
Gramlich was the chairman of Eintracht until 1970. He was made a president after that. He died in 1988.
Sonny says that he could not accept that a criminal and a killer would be involved in his club.
Gramlich was arrested by the Americans for suspected war crimes before being released in 1947.
Eintracht Frankfurt is well-known for their campaigns against discrimination.
The club stripped Gramlich of his title because of the research they did into his past to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Peter Fischer is the club president.
He says thatSonny is always giving him inner strength.
He is one of the survivors of the Nazi killing machine. Only a few of those who survived are left.
Sonny is one of them. You can have a beer with him and he will tell you what happened.
He gives me the strength to say that we are clear in our principles and won't move a millimeter.
In early 2022, Sonny was the subject of our 30-minute Hessischer Rundfunk documentary film called 'A story about the Holocaust, Unity (Eintracht) and Frankfurt'
When Sonny sat in the car after one of the five days of shooting, exhausted after a phenomenal endeavor for a 90-year-old and on the road back to his beloved partner Emmi, he said: "I say thanks to God every day when I wake up."
Thank you that I can see the sky, the moon, the weather, and feel the rain on my skin. That is fun for me.
I have to live to 104 years old to get back what I paid into the pension fund. I have calculated it.
I know a lot of people who have already died. I don't know why I'm here.
Maybe God thinks that he owes me some years of life after all that pain.
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