‘I know the horrible feeling of being hungry and never having enough to eat.’
School meals were a banquet
Evelyne grew up in Berlin during World War II. She has left Berlin only once in her life for a longer period of time. That was in 1943, when countless children were evacuated from the aerial bombing of the city. She was eleven years old at the time. Her whole class was sent to Bad Lettin, a former spa resort in today’s Czech Republic. Two years passed before she could return to her family. She says she was spared much suffering, but the impact of her return to wartorn Berlin still shapes her life today. The hunger she experienced is what she remembers above all.
Eighty years have since passed, but Evelyne Brix remembers the details of the scenes more accurately than many things that happened only a week ago. A very sombre neighbour rang their doorbell, asked to speak to her father, and was discretely invited into the living room. Then her father came into the kitchen to announce to her, her little brother, and her mother: ‘Now we are at war.’
‘I had no idea what war was,’ she admits. ‘But there was an unusual tone in my father’s voice. One that I had never heard before.’
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This text is an excerpt from the book “I’M ALIVE”
by Martina Dase and Dominic Nahr.
All information about the book and where to order can be found here.