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have to put up with us for a while,” my grandfather concluded with a look at his oldest daughter Katrina.
    “Of course you can stay with us,” my aunt assured him. “Where else would you go?” My aunt was right. The cabin was no place for my grandparents. It was a little safer in the suburbs than on Nikolaus Hill, and their house was spacious enough for two more people.
    “Are you sure you feel like talking?” my mother asked, concerned.
    “I don’t think I can sleep yet,” my grandfather argued mildly and held out his cup for a refill. “It was just like any other night,” he began again. “Just another alarm, we figured.”
    “Father was in bed already,” my grandmother joined in. “He didn’t feel well, so I told him to lie down and I would make him some tea.”
    “Never had a chance to drink it,” Opa recalled.
    “Did you go to the cellar?” my father asked.
    “Yes, we did,” my grandfather continued. “No sooner were we down there than the bombs began to fall. First in the distance, then closer. A direct hit made the walls sway. When the lights went off, we panicked. The heavy cellar door broke from its hinges and slid down the stairs, leaving a mound of rubble. Then there was darkness.”
    A shiver raced down my spine. I often envisioned a scene like the one my grandfather described. “How did you get out?” I asked.
    Grandfather continued, “We heard a crackle above us and smelled fire. Smoke drifted down. We knew remaining there would mean certain death.”
    “We broke through the thin wall that separated us from the shelter of the house next door,” Oma explained. “But debris blocked the exit. We entered the shelter beyond that one by breaking through one of the emergency exits, but there was no escape from there either.”
    There was a short pause. Then my grandfather said, “I was almost at the end of my strength, but there was one more wall we had to break through to get to the public shelter beyond. But it looked empty. The people using it must have left in a hurry because there were suitcases and bags of clothing left behind. A baby carriage was tipped over on its side, and infants’ toys were strewn beside it.”
    Oma joined in again. “We even found a baby bottle half filled with milk.”
    “What happened next?” my mother asked.
    After another sip of tea, my grandfather continued, “The shelter looked safe, so we decided to stay and wait for the fire outside to die. But then an explosion in the opposite corner of the shelter tore away a huge steel door. The impact knocked us to the ground, and for a moment we lost our breath. Smoke came billowing in. We had to leave fast.
    “We quickly unbolted the steel door on the other side of the shelter. Then we found ourselves in a little garden surrounded by stone walls with a wooden gate. Flames devoured a pavilion and a wooden table and chairs. On the other end of the garden, there was a stone cherub glowing in the light of the flames, and a small cistern containing animal waste for fertilizer. Off to the side, a door led to the house, or what was left of it—as well as the stairs that led to the shelter from which we emerged. There was no escape in that direction.”
    My mother, apparently familiar with the garden, asked, “Did you leave through the gate then?”
    “Yes, but not for a while,” my grandmother said. “The gate was just barely burning, but it was locked. So then we sat on the ground and awaited our fate.” Her voice trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. Without words, my aunt handed her a handkerchief. After a short pause she continued, “By then, daylight had begun to break.”
    “There was no ladder, and the table and chairs were too burned to be of use,” Opa now recalled. “We searched for some kind of tool that would help us break open the gate, but all we could find was a pair of rusty pruning shears.
    “But then we had another idea. Why not speed up the fire on the wooden gate? It was already