Unlike the bombing raids, which have slowed down, the cellar gossip is running at full capacity—it’s a good way for us to learn how the Ruskis operate and how we need to behave with them. It’s how we heard a very enlightening story that was doing the rounds, about a German woman living in Berlinstrasse.

One night two drunk Russians burst into her apartment. Despite her neighbours’ warnings, she had refused to go down to the cellar. After kicking and smashing her door with their rifle butts, the Russians grabbed her, shoved her against a wall and ripped off her clothes, thrilled that, as luck would have it, they had a choice victim: she was pretty, young and well groomed. Just as they were about to rape her, they caught sight of a baby and a child, asleep in a little bed in the corner. They stopped in their tracks, helped the young woman to get dressed and apologised profusely.

‘Your children?’ asked one of them, named Andreï, in gibberish German.

He went over to the bed.

‘Beautiful, such beautiful babies. Cute!’ he added.

He took off his jacket and gently placed it over the children, who were without bedclothes. Then both soldiers crept out on tiptoes. The next day, Andreï returned with a warm blanket for the woman, as well as milk and chocolate. He came back several times with extra supplies. One day he showed the woman a photo of his children, whom he hadn’t seen since 1941. (Russian soldiers don’t get leave like ours do.) He burst into tears.

‘The war is almost over, you must stay strong, you’ll see your children again very soon,’ comforted the woman.

Andreï replied through the interpreter he’d brought with him, ‘I’m not crying about my children. I’m crying for all the children killed by the Germans.’ He stopped for a second to get his sobbing under control. ‘In my village, the German army knifed the children. Some grabbed them by the feet and smashed their skulls against a wall. I saw it with my own eyes. Several times.’

‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ was Lukas’s defence when he began his series of murders at the Napola. It would seem that the Russians apply that proverb when it comes to women, who were also raped by our soldiers, but not when it comes to children.

So, although we hide young girls in kitchen crawlspaces, under piles of clothes, or pretend they have typhoid fever, conversely, we put our children on show so the Russians feel pity for them.

In our little makeshift family that has emerged since Ute moved into the apartment, Manfred plays the role of the child. Although he’s the same age as me, he’s a head shorter, and puny; people think he’s only six or seven. So he’s the ideal candidate to turn up to the Russian mobile kitchens. And it never fails: feeling sorry for this pale, frightened little kid, the Russians often give him hot soup, chocolate, dried sausage—things that Lukas can’t get among the leftovers in the apartments he searches at dawn.

Sometimes Manfred begs me to go with him. He carries on, whingeing that he’s frightened, that the kitchens are a long way away, that he has to walk several city blocks. I refuse.

‘Can’t you make an effort, for once?’ says that bimbo Ute, who does nothing all day, except for you know what.

‘Come on, Max, be nice, off you go!’ says Lukas.

When Lukas asks me, I go, but unwillingly. I hate the Ruskis putting me on their knees and curling my blond locks in their fingers. Even though I’m tall for my age and nothing about my tough manner arouses tenderness, somehow I often have more success with them than Manfred.

‘Milyi! Milyi!’ They say ‘cute’ whenever they see me. They fall for my platinum hair and my bright, blue eyes every time. Just goes to show that my angel face always works a trick, even on the Ruskis.

That day, I’d got out of bed on the wrong side. I was in a foul mood. I refused to go with Manfred. No one could make me, not even Lukas. I’d give anything to turn back the clock. But there’s no way; it’s over and done with now.

So Manfred sets off as usual, his little basket on his arm. An hour later, he comes back, puts the full basket on the table, and something’s different: inside is a whole, huge ham. A present from the Ruskis.

‘Oh, Manfred! My darling! You are truly briilliaant!’ squeals Ute in her horrible snobby accent.

‘Bravo, well done!’ says Lukas.

I don’t say a word. I’m annoyed that idiot little Manfred has managed to do so well. Anyway, even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have had time to open my mouth, because—while ham in the basket is an unusual event—suddenly we hear footsteps on the stairs. Heavy, clumsy footsteps, tripping, missing one step, hurtling up two at a time, stopping, starting up again, but making it to the fifth floor. To our door. We never bothered to barricade it with planks of wood, or to shove furniture up against it, so it gives way with the first kick. The outline of a man fills the doorframe. It’s a Ruski. A Ruski swaying on legs as thick as tree trunks. A Ruski who reeks of alcohol.

A Ruski who, unlike his comrades, isn’t sleeping off his hangover at this hour of the day, as he should be. Who knows what got into him to follow Manfred?

I feel bad. If I had gone with Manfred, I would have been more vigilant and this Ruski wouldn’t have followed us. Or at least I would have been able to shake him off.

But now he’s here.

Why did he follow Manfred? Wasn’t he happy about handing over the whole ham? Has he come to get it back? No problem: we’ll give him back his damn ham. Right now. And he can take the rest of the food too.

But the Ruski has no interest in the ham.

He’s staring at Ute. She’s wearing her man’s suit pants and shirt but not the jacket. As the shirt isn’t buttoned to the top, you can see a bit of her cleavage. She hasn’t wedged her hat on over her forehead; she’s bare-headed. Instead of flattening her hair with water, she’s let it go curly. And with an old tube of lipstick that she found on the ground one day, she’s highlighted her lips.

She is going to get it in the neck. She’ll cop it—rape.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really care. But Lukas is horrified. He stands up. At least he tries to, but the Ruski aims his machine gun at him.

‘SS?’ he yells.

It’s a legitimate question, I realise, as a wave of panic hits me. Lukas is blond. His eyes are the colour of steel. He’s tall. He spent his adolescence in a Napola and he’s got the bearing of a Jungmann. Since he’s been sleeping with Ute, he looks like a man. So, yes, he could easily pass for an SS, a young one, one of those recruited late, at the last minute, or for a member of the Volkssturm. Those guys are always being killed by the Russians when they’re found at the back of a cellar.

The Ruski has no interest in the ham, or in Ute. It’s Lukas he’s after.

‘You SS?’ he repeats, yelling even louder.

Terrified, Lukas only manages to shake his head in response. That’s all he does, like an idiot, without saying a word. Why doesn’t he reply? In his mother tongue, Polish? He’s told me why he hasn’t used it before, but he has to now. He absolutely has to.

‘Niet! Niet! Ne SS! Polski! Yevreïskie! Yevreïskie!’ I jabber a few words of Russian, screaming that no, he’s not SS, but Polish, and Jewish, Jewish! Manfred and Ute, in a moment of panic, join in too, screaming, ‘Jude! Jude!’

‘Nix Juden! Juden kaputt!’ the Ruski retorts. No more Jews! Death to all Jews!

My mind is racing. I’d heard of a few incidents in cellars when, in order to save their lives, Nazis tried to pass as Jews. They were uncovered when they couldn’t speak either Yiddish or Hebrew.

‘Lukas, recite a prayer in Hebrew! You have to prove that you’re Jewish!’

Lukas looks at me, aghast. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. I understand why he’s gone blank, right now. No doubt because of the shock. I don’t know what else to do, so I charge, head down, straight at the Ruski, in the mad hope of grabbing his gun from him. Perhaps that will give Lukas time to react, to gather his wits. But the Ruski is faster than I am and, with one shove, knocks me to the ground, as easily as if he had cleared the ham off the table. Without taking his eyes off Lukas, he hurtles towards him, grabs him by the collar, yanks him to his feet, slams him against the wall and rummages in his pockets.

‘You SS!’ he pronounces, holding something up in the air.

I stand up shakily. There’s blood running down my forehead, trickling into my eyes so I can’t see what’s in the Ruski’s hand, the one that’s not holding the gun.

But I could definitely tell that the ‘You SS’ was no longer a question. It was a statement.

It was the 2nd of May, 1945. Berlin had surrendered, at 4 a.m. There was still fighting in the north and south of Germany, but there were no more shots in Berlin.

Except for one, a last shot that echoed in our apartment.

Even if Manfred, Ute and I had spoken fluent Russian, the Ruski would have pulled the trigger.

Even if Lukas had decided to reply in Polish, even if he’d remembered a Hebrew prayer, the Ruski would have pulled the trigger.

Because he was drunk.

Because that’s war.

Because, in any case, no one ever wanted to believe that Lukas was Jewish.

And because, instead of burning it, he had kept in his pocket the photo of the blonde woman and her baby (me) posing with the Führer.

Why? Why did Lukas keep that damn photo? What was he planning to do with it?

I wasn’t sad when the blonde woman died. I wasn’t sad when the Führer died.

But when Lukas died, yes, I was.

Now, only now, do I feel like an orphan. Damn it, dreadfully like an orphan.