Tag: 2024-09 Notes-From-Renate

January 1945. But even during the last months of the war there were always little miracles. I often slept very badly, dreaming of bombs and Russians attacking us, and I didn’t miss a sound on the street. Once in the middle of the night I heard the trampling of army boots on the cobblestones of…

During the last two years of the war I had begged Aunt Fanny for a plot of my own. I only planted tomatoes there. Every time a horse-drawn cart came up Bahnhofstrasse, I rushed out onto the street armed with a bucket and shovel to sweep up the horse droppings. As a result, I certainly…

December 1944. In what I have described so far, I have tried to familiarize the reader with the Thuringian landscape and the habits of its inhabitants. But this includes, above all, a Sonneberg specialty, the preparation of which has been made so much fuss that I actually have to dedicate an entire chapter to these…

Summer 1944. So we spent the last year of the war in Sonneberg in relative safety. There were frequent air raid warnings there too, and while many Sonneberg residents remained calmly in their apartments, we always ran into the basement, which offered little protection, but this escape had become so second nature to us that…

December 5, 1943. We had no idea of the masses of people who were rolling around from the city, with nothing left but the bare lives they had saved. In the morning we visited the remains of the house that had been destroyed by the aerial mine. I simply did not understand how only a…