‘How did you picture your life after the war?’

I was very naïve. That the Germans would lose the war, I was sure of, but I did not understand that everything could not go back to how it had been before. I was utterly convinced that after the war Transylvania would once again become part of Romania. Those early teenage dreams still lingered in my mind. I would return, study medicine, and train as a paediatrician. I would go to Africa and heal the sick.

I could not imagine that, even if the Allies won, nothing would be as it once was.

Had we not studied history in school? Yes, we had, but that was mostly dates and years, names of rulers and battlefields, a kind of learning that did not move us and was soon forgotten. I was not prepared. I did not understand that life could not go on as before. With all the effort in the world, I would never have been able to foresee what awaited us after the war.