A Lost Childhood In Wartime Germany
A powerful and moving memoir of Helga Schneider's abandonment by her parents and her childhood in Berlin from 1941-1947.
In 1941, Helga Schneider was abandoned by her mother, who left her and her brother to go to join the SS. As her father is away fighting at the front, Schneider and her brother are first looked after by her father's mother, and then by his new wife. In 1943, she returns to her step-mother's home in Berlin, only to spend most of the rest of the war in a subterranean bunker on account of the relentless bombing of the city. Schneider and her brother have the dubious honour of meeting the Fuhrer who invites Aryan children to stay in his bunker. Eventually, Berlin becomes a burning pyre (hence the title of the book) and the inhabitants are reduced to living in inhuman conditions, without electricity, gas, medical supplies and more importantly, sanitised water and food.
Schneider describes very graphically the day to day living of her and her bunker cohabitants (residents of the same abandoned building) during this time, listening in to the German propagandist radio and the BBC, and the constant foraging for basic needs between air raids, and the desperation, suicides and fatalities. Schneider conveys the misery and horror of life in Berlin during the war years in very simple, clear language, without embroidery or excess sentimentality.
An exceptionally moving document.
