We had quite a disturbing time in the cellar last night. There were lots of bombs. The walls were shaking and above our heads the dim light from the kerosene lamp flickered under the crisscross of beams. Would it hold up if the building collapsed? Was it actually such a good idea to be buried alive? Or was it more dangerous to be trapped outside in the rubble?

No one slept a wink. All Lukas, Manfred and I wanted to do was get upstairs, jump in our beds and sleep. Sleep all day, hoping it would be a day—they hardly ever happen anymore—when the air-raid siren didn’t go off every hour. Too bad if we couldn’t eat. We were too tired to go hunting for food. And, anyway, the less we ate, the less hungry we’d be.

But when we climb out of the cellar, there are people in the apartment. We can tell immediately from the smell in the air. Sweat. Gunpowder. As we creep quietly across the lobby, we bump into huge kitbags on the floor. One more step, and there in the living room is a soldier, lying on the armchairs which I usually make up as my bed. He’s fast asleep, his arms dangling, his legs folded sideways, his chin sunk in the collar of his jacket.

Holding our breath, without a word, we turn and look towards the master bedroom. As there’s no door we can see four soldiers lying close together on the bed. Then we look into Manfred’s bedroom opposite, where two more soldiers are lying top-to-tail in the single bed.

‘Ruskis?’ whispers Manfred, terrified.

He’s shaking like a leaf—I think I can hear his knees knocking.

We don’t answer. We’ve lost our voices, our hearts are pounding, our legs are like jelly. I glance at Lukas. He’s as white as a ghost, the blood drained from his face. But wasn’t he looking forward to the arrival of the Ruskis? Now that they’re here, don’t tell me he’s scared, too?

He raises his hand and signals us not to make a sound, not to move. No chance of that—we’re petrified. He creeps on tiptoe into each room then comes back to us.

‘Not Ruskis,’ he mouths, ‘Krauts!’

Relieved, I check out the rooms as well, Manfred right on my heels, like my shadow. They’re definitely our soldiers: part of the last infantry units in retreat. Normally they travel through the streets of Berlin at night, only rarely do you see any during the day. They walk slowly, not marching in time, limping, dawdling, oblivious to the people gawking at them.

These ones are sleeping like logs. They look exhausted. They’re filthy—their uniforms encrusted with mud—and thin, hollow-cheeked, unshaven. They’ve fallen asleep in weird positions, one guy’s boots on top of another’s helmet. Some are facedown, so they must have fallen on top of the bed just like that. I find them pathetic, ugly, pitiful—they already look like prisoners. They also look like they couldn’t give a damn about having lost the war.

After staring at them for a bit, I turn to see Lukas, still in the lobby, armed with a submachine gun that he must have taken out of one of the kitbags. He points it at the soldier in the living room. I recognise that warlike glint in his eye. Here we go again: he’s back to his obsession with taking out a German in uniform.

I run, not caring at all about the noise I make, or that I’ve dropped Manfred, who was clinging on to me. ‘Stop! You can’t do that!’

‘Oh, yeah? Just watch me!’ shouts Lukas. ‘Get out of the way, or I’ll shoot you!’

I jump on him and we roll onto the floor. I try to grab the gun. He holds firm. That’s when Manfred starts sobbing, and screaming, too. ‘Stop! I mean, stop! You’re mad!’

It reminds me of our fight at Kalish. Except that here the fight stops short. Bang, bang, bang! The submachine gun has gone off, making three big holes in the living room wall. Lukas and I freeze.

‘Are you hurt?’ yells Manfred. ‘Are you dead?’

No, miraculously, we’re neither hurt nor dead. And, even more miraculously, the soldier in the living room hasn’t woken up. Nor have the others. None of them has moved.

Silence.

Aren’t they going to react? It’s impossible that they didn’t hear our screams, the gunshots. Well, no, it’s not: they’re still asleep. You’d think they were dead.

The three of us suddenly get the giggles, and that doesn’t wake the soldiers either. Then we stop whispering and start talking normally. Lukas wants to get rid of the men, which means killing them. I point out that we’ll have to get rid of the bodies, and that won’t be easy. He insists, and so do I. Things are getting heated and we’ll be fighting tooth and nail again before you know it. The air-raid siren ends the discussion.

We have to clear out fast. The bombs will take care of the intruders.

Before we leave, I can’t help performing one last test. I go up to the sleeping soldier in the living room, the highest-ranking one, with three stars and two stripes. I lean over and yell in his ear, ‘Look, Hauptsturmführer! Look at that boy there’—I point to Lukas—‘He’s a Jew! A Jew! The real McCoy!’

I feel better, liberated. All those years with that sentence stuck in my throat. Apart from that one time in the study hall when I made a pathetic attempt, I’ve never been able to utter it. Now that it’s out I feel like I can breathe better.

Manfred pulls me out the door by the sleeve. ‘Stop saying rubbish.’

‘It’s not rubbish. Lukas is Jewish, I swear! Why don’t you ask him.’

‘Sure, sure, okay. He’s Jewish, and I’m French. Come on, let’s get going.’

The soldiers stayed two days in our apartment and had disappeared by the morning of the third day.

People are panicking now. ‘The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!’ That’s all we hear, everywhere, night and day. In the cellars and outside. There’s no more radio or newspapers, but word of mouth is working at full speed. Relaying the truth.

The other night, Frau Oberham, the fat woman, went up to the blonde woman and peered over her shoulder at the photo the woman was holding in her hands, as usual. She shook her head, sighed loudly and said, ‘I know it’s difficult, but you should burn that photo. If the Russians see you with it, they’ll kill you.’

The blonde woman didn’t reply. She held the photo to her chest, as if the other woman had tried to grab it from her, and then she moved to another spot.

Now word of mouth has announced that the Red Army is on the outskirts of the city. Owners are turning up briefly at their apartments to destroy any incriminating evidence: portraits of Hitler, uniforms, party insignia, correspondence. They’re raising white flags on balconies (to show the brigades, who are killing the occupants of houses with Nazi flags).

Lukas hangs a white flag on the balcony of our apartment. He orders me to take off my Napola uniform and burn it. When I complain that I don’t have any other clothes, he leaves and returns an hour later with a pair of pants and a sweater my size, both bloodstained.

He took them off a corpse in the street.

I put them on; I have no choice. Now I really look like a Skullface.

My uniform was still smouldering when the telephone rang.

We looked at each other, all three of us transfixed, more terrified by the ring than we had been by the air-raid siren, more shocked than by the presence of the soldiers the other day.

The telephone doesn’t work, so how can it ring? Manfred and I had often played with it; there was no ringtone.

‘Who could it be?’ asked Lukas.

‘How would I know?’

‘Daddy! Mummy!’ Manfred screams. Before we can stop him, he runs and picks up the receiver. ‘Hello…Yes…Who’s speaking?’ Trembling, he grows pale. The receiver stuck to his ear like a prosthesis, he stares at us, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Nein! Nein!’ he screams. ‘Hello? Hello?’

Whoever it was has hung up on him. Manfred drops the receiver, which dangles from its cord like one of the ‘cowards’ hanging from the lampposts in the street, and rushes over to me.

‘So? Who was it?’ asks Lukas.

‘I think it might have been…a Ruski.’

‘Well, what did he say to you?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t understand, ’cause he was speaking Russian and only at the end in German.’

‘When he said what?’ Lukas has had enough.

‘He said: “You SS?” I said no, but I don’t think he believed me.’

We all pause. Lukas looks at me. I look at Lukas. Manfred looks at us.

‘We’re getting out of here, for good,’ yells Lukas.