Inge’s War

A riveting account of a German woman’s experiences during World War II–a story not of heroism or evil,but of ordinary people caught in the gears of history–and a granddaughter’s quest to uncover a family history kept hidden for seventy years Growing up in FranceSvenja O’Donnell knew little of her German grandmother’s pastexcept that she had been raised in K nigsburga place that no longer existed on any map. But when O’Donnell’s reporting brought her near the windswept city–now known as Kaliningradand a part of Russia–a spur-of-the-moment phone call to her grandmother Inge opened the floodgates to a family story she could not have imagined. Over the course of nearly ten years of conversationsas well as archival research and travel across Europeshe would soon learn that behind her grandmother’s facade of dull respectability lay a troubled past of passiondisplacementand betrayal. In this transporting and illuminating bookthe award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge’s life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years: from falling in love in Berlin’s underground jazz bars with a sensitive young man who was soon sent to the Eastern Front to returning to her provincial home pregnant with his child to spearheading her family’s flight to Denmark as the Red Army closed inher not-yet-two-year-old daughter–O’Donnell’s mother–in tow. By walking in her grandmother’s footsteps and ultimately uncovering the act of violence that finally parted Inge from the man she lovedO’Donnell tells a part of the World War II story that is less often heard: that of ordinary German womenwhose stories will soon disappear from living memory.