My Childhood in Nazi Germany

Born in Germany in 1934, Elsbeth Emmerich was only five years old when World War II broke out. This is the autobiographical story of her childhood on the German home front, from her first days at school, through the departure of her father to join the war to the end of the war. This book gives an insight into what it was like for ordinary people, and in particular for a child, to live in Nazi Germany. With her father away in the army, Elsbeth lived with her mother, sisters and grandparents. She remembers the terror of air raids and the horror of seeing neighbours killed when their house was bombed. Her grandfather was an anti-fascist and was arrested several times when he was tortured. There were also happy memories of gathering nuts and fruit in the woodlands and little details of "making do" - unravelling old pullovers and turning sheets into shirts. Through this book the reader sees a child's struggle to understand the adult world, her contradictory and changing feelings about Hitler and the war and the gradual development of political awareness.