When I was a child, I had asked my grandmother about the Second World War. She had a very different personality from my grandfather’s: she was a social creature and no one could deny it but the old spinsters of the town. She was the sun brightening a room, all of her five feet of smiling, pure joy. She had told me about those dark times, the strict curfews, the frightful Nazi raids; about praying in the dark for her young love’s life.
Now it was all before my eyes, as real as the bombs and gunfire discharging around us. I spied some partisans hide and attack with guerrilla tactics. Around me were young faces whose tired eyes had already seen what nobody should ever face in their life.
I was about to witness an era that others had witnessed when I was only a child. It was an incongruous a
