examples – 9 – Erhard

The boy did not survive, but 80 years after his death, N. never missed an opportunity to speak of her playmate as if he were still there. Once, when I was about to leave the room after a long day, she called out after me a sentence that should not be forgotten: “He was still so little!”—a phrase that sprang from the deepest recesses of her protective instinct for her younger playmate.

Erhard, the Bohemian war volunteer, lost his life at the age of 18 in December 1943 while en route to the Eastern Front during an Allied bombing raid at the Leipzig train station.

The talented young satirist’s writing instrument is said to have been covered in blood.

I found Erhard’s fountain pen in a drawer of the sewing cabinet. And then N. told me the story.

The parents had voluntarily embraced Adolf Hitler’s vision of a Greater Germany. Yet they were living in Bohemia, in Czechoslovakia. The cold chill from the children’s graves still haunts us to this day.