“With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“I look at my mother, connected by a breath of glimmering hope, her red and shadowed eyes reveal that some element of our whole… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“I remember seeing one elderly man look at us, and he held his hand out, and most frightening were his eyes, dark as a soulless abyss, so black that it looked as if it had been blasted from a cyclone. I felt he was looking right at me. For a moment, I thought I was looking through his sockets, past… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“One day, I noticed that my father’s uniform had changed from a smart, light green colour with silver edging on the shoulder straps to… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“Children accept the conditions they are born into, and, to a degree, I was getting used to the bombings, fires, and death around me. I remember that I thought those things were normal. It is grown-ups who worry about things, and this ... this was total panic! I could taste the fear, and I could see that my mother was… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“But the public did not know the truth about what happened to the people in the trucks; they believed the stories from the government, who said that these people, known as Untermensch (non-people or ‘lower people’), were simply moved to open spaces in the east and settled on farms, away from Germany, so as not to ‘contaminate’ the German race.… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“Later, I started to understand just why these children ‘hated’ us other children. I understood that they did not, in fact, hate ‘us’, but hated the fact that we were German and spoke in a language that they associated with pain, fear and the loss of their parents, uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers, their whole families, in fact. Once I understood… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“The fact is that many people did not – and still do not – understand that many Germans were held in the concentration camps… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“As he journeyed alone toward the monster that is death, we could do nothing to help him, nor the others still alive; all the… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“I heard people talking about what this Red Army did to any Germans they captured, and this only added to my fears.” — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
“I do recall hearing a conversation in our home in Strausberg, between my mother and my father, where my mother sounded very angry that my cousin had let the Rödels down by having to be dragged out of Oma’s house, crying for his mother and shouting that he did not want to return to the war in Russia. Like a… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share
“I quickly got used to being picked up by my mother, and taken to the air raid shelter near our home. Although frightening, this… — Alfred Nestor Copy Share Image
