Growing up in (Adolf) Hitler's Germany‪.‬

I was sitting on the steps of an old baroque fountain in the market square, whose centrepiece was a statue of the Virgin Mary by a celebrated local artist of the period - today it is prominently displayed in tourist brochures of this picturesque town - when I saw a column of men in brown uniforms (a darker brown than that of Nazi party uniforms) marching three-abreast - or rather shuffling - down the main street. As they came closer I saw German soldiers - old men with rifles - guarding the column. It didn't take me long to realize that this was a group of Russian prisoners of war being forced to retreat before the advancing Allied armies. Their faces were ashen, large eyes sunken into hollow sockets, their uniforms hanging like scarecrow rags on skeletons - though, in retrospect, these men did not look quite as emaciated as the liberated concentration camp inmates whose pictures we would see a few months later, after the American occupation. Still, the shock was such that at first I sat frozen to the steps. When I finally managed to get up I could see a virtually endless column winding its way into the town. Some of the prisoners held up birdcages and baskets they had pieced together and woven from sticks and bamboo; they were shouting, or rather moaning, "Brot, Brot" (bread). Townswomen rushed up to the column, trading bread for these artifacts as the German guards tried to put a stop to the barter. But the column was long and the guards sparse, so many a loaf found its way to the prisoners. After I had regained my composure I rushed home and asked my mother for some bread; back on the main street, this was quickly torn from me by desperate hands. But as the columns kept coming, it was obvious that all the bread in town could do but little to alleviate the hunger of the prisoners, and compassion gave way to resignation and indifference.