Part 21: Cherished Radio The front of the house was cracked several times and covered with heavy brown soil from the basement to the eaves.
Part 20: Moving Again The most important task now was to equip the empty apartment with the necessities of life. There was a lack of everything.
Part 19: Tenants On Demand Out of ten houses in the settlement, three were destroyed: No. 1, No. 8, and No. 10. 21 people dead, all women and children.
Part 18: We Survived I did not hear the explosion. A superhuman shock wave hurled me into an infinitely black nothingness. Then it was silent – deathly silent. After an eternity, the children screamed in agony.
Part 17: My Playground Of all this I neither suspected nor knew. I was only a boy of about eleven years old when I sat on the board of the big sandbox on a genuinely nice May day and watched the children baking patties and building castles.
Part 16: My Hometown Is Being Destroyed Although our town was located between two large chemical plants, it had not yet been bombed. On an early-winter December day, there was an all-night air raid alert.
Part 15: Bread And Butter Despite all the shortages, father always took one or two extra slices with him when he went to the factory for his shift. When my mother asked him why he needed so much bread, he did not answer at first.
Part 14: A Cozy Luxury Apartment Of course, the relatives were curious about the new apartment. Aunt Emmie came, looked at everything and said to my mother with admiration in her voice: ‘Lotte, you live like a princess.’
Part 13: Musical Instruments No One Played Anymore The stepsiblings did not stay twelve for too long. The girls left home at 14 and worked as house cleaners for rich people in the city.
Part 12: A New Chapter In Life Long before the big move, a new phase of my life had also begun. I started school. In my school bag was a slate board, an arithmetic book, and a reading primer. A damp sponge and a cloth to dry the board dangled from two strings in the satchel.