As a boy growing up during the Cold War in a small town in West Germany, I dreaded the monthly air-raid siren tests. Today, the smaller details and histories of the second World War are increasingly vanishing from the public eye, overshadowed by the larger events that define it: the Battle of Stalingrad, the Normandy Landings, and, of course, the Holocaust. All families in Germany, Poland and Russia are related in the stories we hear and tell about the second World War and its aftermath. The war remains an unending repository of buried memory, which will keep families and historians busy forever. Cilly’s story is a small one from the war and its aftermath; nothing more and nothing less.

Source: The Irish Times January 19, 2018 06:22 UTC