On May 8, 1945, a radio announce­ment declared the end of World War II and the women of the neighborhood got very busy. They made huge pots and bowls full of green peppermint tea and red berry juice and they prepared plates of dry bread and cooked potatoes, whatever scarce food they could find in their pantries. The women washed their hair and put lipstick on. They colored the upper lip in the shape of a heart and then they rolled the lower lip against the upper. They smiled and leaned their heads back to pluck their eyebrows into fine, thin lines. They cut their toenails and took colorful dresses off hangers to hold against their figures, turning in front of mirrors, which they hadn’t looked into for a long time. Some painted with brown pens and steady hands, a long seam from their heels upwards to their buttocks to pretend they were wearing silk stockings. My mother fixed a red tulip flower in her hair. We had heard the news about the end of the war from the small radio in our kitchen, which was fixed to the wall like a little alter I’d seen in church. It was called Volksempfänger — people’s radio — and had only one station. It often scratched and moaned like a sick animal, especially when Der Führer bellowed his speeches and filled our home with the heavy stench of madness. Carved wood ornaments on the front had brown fabric behind them that trembled when his voice poured out. But today, a different speaker announced that the war was over and that the Allied Troops would soon be marching into Germany.

I don’t really remember if my family commented on the news or showed emotions, so I didn’t know if that declaration was good or bad for us. The war was something strange and ever-present for me, and I assumed it was a normal part of life. War was a backdrop for my childhood. War’s presence hid in the corners of our home and wafted like a foul stench behind the curtains and underneath my bed, but we had gotten used to, it and did not talk about the war. Nobody explained to me what the “end of war” meant  —  and so many things had already ended before the end.

In front of our house was a triangle of grass between three merging streets. The women had gathered there and set up their drinks and food in this place, and then we stood and waited. Soon a rhythmic scraping sound rolled towards us and then soldiers of the German army appeared. They poured and rolled by, a seemingly never-ending murky river of men. I stood in front of my mother and held her hand. She wore the blue­-and-white dress that I loved so much. I hadn’t seen it on her since the time of our family vacation at the Baltic Sea, years ago. I leaned my head backwards against her belly.

The German soldiers who staggered in front of us were dirty, wounded, tired, their eyes glazed and their movements helpless and awkward. Some sat on horse-drawn carts, others on bikes, but most walked. A man with only one arm and a bandaged hand tried to cling to one of the wagons, but his bloody hand slipped off and he nearly tumbled to the ground. He caught himself and slouched forward.

The women leaned into the street to offer drink and food; I could see the soft, white undersides of their arms and chins when I looked up. The soldiers grabbed the gifts hastily. They continued their march as they ate and drank, and some sent an exhausted smile back to the person who had extended this gesture of caring. The stream of tired human bodies was pushed by an invisible power towards an invisible goal. A feeling of utter futility hovered above them. It seemed as if they were moving from nowhere to nowhere. Everybody was quiet, like during a funeral. Only the boots of the soldiers scratched along the sandy road.

After a long time, the last of the military men dwindled away like dry leaves blown into the corners of this destroyed country. But the women stayed and waited — I didn’t know why. And then they came, the next river of men, the English and American soldiers, the occupiers of our burnt earth. They looked clean and shaven, their belts and boots sparkled. They carried healthy limbs and unbroken self-esteem. They smiled at the women who greeted them with the same gestures of lifting their arms with drink and food in their hands, leaning towards the men and exchanging smiles. The women’s naked arms reached across me towards the soldiers like flowers towards the sun. There were shouts of “Hello!” and “Thank you!” The men waved and the women brightened. The whole world was sucking in air and exhaling after holding tight for too long, inside a suffocating clench. I wondered if the losing German soldiers were the wrong and unworthy ones, and the victors were the good ones, just by the fact that they had won the war. Their prowess and unbroken-ness were attractive and seemed to charge the group of women with electric and glistening desire. I, too, thought that they looked splendid.

I moved the tip of my shoe back and forth in the dust and rocks of the road, back and forth, scraping a little half circle in front of me. What was the meaning of these strange parades? Both, losers and winners, had faces and hands and feet; they looked very similar. Why were some men enemies and the others our people? And the enemies were so friendly and kind. They gave us kids chewing gum, something I had never tasted before. It stuck to my teeth and made my mouth drip with pleasure. It was a miracle food. I could bite and bite on it and it never got smaller.

I liked these soldiers — they made me smile. They were not frightening. Were these the men who threw the bombs on my town and burned down Hamburg until the houses looked like rotten teeth?

I held tightly onto my mother’s hand as I watched the manly legs marching by in front of me, my eyes at the height of their belts and dangling pistols. I feared if I let go, I might fall apart and scatter into pieces, like a puzzle that couldn’t be assembled into a whole picture. My head rumbled with all the things stuffed inside which I didn’t understand. I was too young to know what I know today, that we were witnessing the last aching gasps of the most widespread war in human history. I didn’t know that over seventy million people were killed over six years, most of them civilians like us: women and children. We were standing at the sidelines, watching the last convulsions of the deadliest global conflict ever. The majority of the world’s nations had spent their most precious human, economic and scientific resources on the destruction of human cultures and lives.

We women and children hovered at the edge of the river of men-of-war in front of us. We were standing like a living wall. The soldiers were flowing by, their movements brushing along our hips, our bellies and our breasts. We were like a riverbank with roots and rocks in it, and they were the current, whirling and changing the shape of the ground. We had an appointment with history, and we knew it in the marrow of this very moment. Out of the corners of our eyes we recognized the slanted landscape of an unknown future, a future when we women would sit together and would become quiet and struggle with words and stare out of the windows, holding on tightly to each other’s hands. A future when we would say: “Do you remember” and “It was bad” and “It was good,” and so … and so ….