His family had lived for 150 years in an area of Romania called Moldova, until the Soviets annexed the country in the late 1930's, and shortly thereafter they were summarily ejected off the farm they owned, along with the rest of the ethnic German minority who lived there.
After wandering around Austria, the Nazis finally ordered his family to take up residence on an abandoned farm in Poland. One day while home alone, my aquaintance was rummaging through what few possesions the family had been able to keep after fleeing the Russians, and discovered an old shotgun and some shells that his father had carefully hidden. Being a young lad of ten or twelve, he did what most boys of that age would: he rounded up some of his friends whom he thought would be "impressed" by his illicit find, and they all snuck out back of the barn to shoot the shotgun at some old boards.
Word of this adventure spread quickly, and within a day or so the Gestapo showed up to search the house, found the gun, and dragged his father away "for questioning."
Needless to say, the shotgun was confiscated. His father was eventually released after three days, but only after the Gestapo satisfied themselves that he wasn't part of some resistance group, and with the stern warning that in the future, if there was any "trouble" in that area, his father would be on the list of "the usual suspects." For the balance of the war, whenever anything suspicious occurred, my aquaintance's dad was invariably rounded up along with the other "usual suspects" and "interrogated."
And this is how the Nazis treated ethnic Germans who they caught with firearms....
Can't do the time.... don't do the crime....
/sarcasm