Editor's note: This is part of an ongoing series of occasional stories on local World War II veterans.

In some ways, World War II veteran Raymond Bartolo, 79, of Greenville, was one of the lucky ones. He survived the war, unlike 405,399 Americans who were killed and 78,976 who are listed as missing. Among the dead was Ray's younger brother Eddie who was fatally wounded on Christmas day, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge.

At that time Ray's artillery battalion was training in the United States, preparing for assignment to the Pacific. Because of the Battle of the Bulge, they were diverted to Europe. After they helped push the enemy back, Ray's unit was sent to fight in southern Germany.

That's where Ray turned out to be not so lucky. His job was to lay telephone wire from the forward observer positions on the front lines to the artillery guns a mile or so back. On April 23, 1945, he and his crew chanced upon American troops trying to break into a walled compound. It was the concentration camp at Flossenburg, where Jewish prisoners were used as slave labor -- and beaten, starved and incinerated. It was one of the worst nightmares in all of human history.

"We had never even heard the word concentration camp. We were only 20 years old at the time, all we knew was, it was a huge facility when we got there and broke into the camp. We called back and told them we had a situation here, we had a whole bunch of people that looked like walking zombies, and we didn't know what to do with them, so they came in with the medics and food and a convoy of trucks to do something with these people."

"There was a Polish doctor there. He was a Jew, and he could speak a little English, He took us through the camp, and he showed us the crematory, and he took us into one of the barracks that the prisoners were still in. They didn't even know that we had liberated the camp. When we saw the conditions of the people that were in these cubicles, the condition was something that was imprinted on my mind ever since 1945."

After Germany surrendered, Ray's battalion was sent to the southern Pacific. They were to take part in what would certainly have been, for many, a suicide mission: The invasion of Japan. Fortunately, Japan surrendered before they arrived, so they became part of the army of occupation.

Late in 1945, Ray developed a serious case of asthma, which was his ticket home.

On Christmas Day, 1945, he arrived at the U.S. Army hospital in Presidio San Francisco. There were brightly wrapped presents on every bunk. And wonder of wonders: who should arrive but Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

"They talked to each one of us," Bartolo said, "And they gave each of us an envelope, and there was a $20 bill in every one of those envelopes. They talked to us for an hour or so in appreciation for what we had done."

It should have been the end of a bad dream and the beginning of a good one. But the good dream lasted only a few days. When he arrived home, he had to help his parents cope with the loss of his brother.

"When I left for the service, Dad's hair was as black as coal," Ray said. "This was three years later, his hair was white as snow -- mainly from losing my brother Eddie."

To make matters worse, the Belgian government wanted to recover the land used for the cemetery where Eddie was buried. Eddie had to be brought home.

When the Grove City Veterans of Foreign Wars heard about it, they decided to start a veteran's plot. Eddie Bartolo was the first person buried there.

The loss of Eddie knocked the merry out of Christmas for the Bartolo family.

"From 1946 until 1957, when my daughter was 2 years old, my mother never had a Christmas tree in the house because my brother was wounded on Christmas day, and he died on New Year's. That's what Christmas meant to her at that time."

While adjusting to the absence of their younger son, the family had to come to cope with the problems of the elder: Recurring nightmares relating to his encounter with the horrors of Flossenburg.

"I had nightmares over this continually. My folks thought I was going nuts for a long time, because I would have these periodically, waking up screaming, and they didn't know what was going on. And they would ask me about them, and I just didn't ever want to tell them about what I saw because it was hard to try to tell anybody.''

The healing process took a long time.

"It was after 1995 when it was the 50th anniversary of everything that everybody started to open up, because all this stuff was sort of kept hidden, or suppressed. I got to meet about eight survivors of the camp that live in Pittsburgh."

His conversations with them allowed Ray to release some of the suppressed memories that caused his nightmares. In fact, they inspired him to learn more not only about Flossenburg, but also about the other concentration and extermination camps built by the Nazis -- Buchenwald, Dachau, Ravensbruch, and Belsenburg, to name just a few. He began to give talks to high school kids, service groups, Lions Clubs and Kiwanis Clubs.

"I'm willing to talk to anybody about it now, about what transpired in that time. There's a quote I use -- I don't remember who said it or where I heard it. 'To know the horrors of war is to want peace.' And that's the way I end up my talks."

One of his most important talks was before an audience of only two -- an interviewer and a video camera man at his home in Greenville. It was part of a project to record the remembrances of people who had personally experienced the Holocaust. The tape is now a permanent part of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

After the interview, Ray received a thank you letter that sums up his contribution:

"In sharing your personal testimony as a liberator of the Holocaust, you have granted future generations the opportunity to experience a personal connection with history. Your interview will be carefully preserved as an important part of the most comprehensive library of testimonies ever collected. Far into the future, people will be able to see a face, hear a voice, and observe a life so that they may listen and learn, and always remember. Thank you for your invaluable contribution, your strength, and your generosity of spirit.''

The letter was signed by the chairman of the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation -- Stephen Spielberg, Academy Award winning director of "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan."