Nothing for Tears

Lali and her husband Freddy Horstmann, a retired diplomat, were living at the end of the war at Kerzendorf, an elegant eighteenth-century house in a small park, fifteen miles east of Berlin. This book tells the story of the last months of the war under the desperate and demoralised Nazis and the terrifying arrival of the Russians. It ends tragically in early 1946 when the secret police arrive and take Freddy Horstmann away.First published in 1953, Nothing for Tears evokes the mixture of fear and violence, deprivation and gratitude, gallantry and sometimes even gaiety, of that time. Quietly and simply told, it is an eloquent and heartbreaking story.