Germany looks at Ukraine - and is shocked.

The usually self-controlled father struggles with his composure in front of the television, while his wife goes to a demonstration for the first time since school.

The fourth grader wonders what she would take with her on the run.

And her much older brother discusses with his buddies whether they would be willing to defend their country.

Suddenly we ask ourselves questions, we have images in our heads that were previously foreign to us.

Eve sleeper

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Things are different for those who experienced the Second World War as children or young people.

You know many of the scenes that now reach us from your own experience.

You know what air-raid shelters look like and how it feels to huddle there for hours.

You don't need black and white photos to visualize the sight of destroyed cities.

They stood at train stations themselves and said goodbye to their mothers as they were taken to safety by "Kinderlandverschickung".

Those over 80 are affected differently by the images from Ukraine and neighboring countries than those born later.

Because they evoke memories.

These are memories that sometimes express themselves almost physically.

Clara Engel, born in 1937, is experiencing this firsthand.

“When I turned on the TV on the first day of the war and heard a siren in Ukraine, it was almost like a pain.

And then I cried," says the 84-year-old.

They spent many nights in the basement

Today she, who is afraid to read her real name in the newspaper, is at home in the Taunus, as a child she lived in the greater Hanover area.

Your place of residence was spared from bombings for the entire duration of the war.

But due to the proximity to the cities of Hamelin and Hanover, from 1943 little Clara spent many nights in the basement of the apartment building in which she lived with her mother and brother, who was one year younger.

The father had been drafted directly in 1939, and the sister, who was two years older, was housed with her grandparents in the Taunus.

In 1943, after their father had left home, a little brother joined them.

During the nights of the bombing, they were woken up by the so-called pre-warning, a siren, which was followed by the main alarm.

"Then we're in the basement.

That was practiced.

We always slept in our clothes, we only had to put our shoes on in Tran, and we each had a suitcase next to the bed that we grabbed.

A neighbor who had no children carried the youngest down to the basement in a woven laundry basket,” says Clara Engel.

Engel remembers the hours, sometimes whole nights, that the ten or so women and children spent in the cellar as very quiet and very dark.

The sound of the bombers - "an unimaginably deep hum, very even" - is still in her ear.

But the low-flying planes that came during the day were also scary.

"You only heard them when they were already there," says Clara Engel, who was told to throw himself flat on the street in such a case.

"When I said goodbye to my mother in the morning before school, I thought, I don't know at all whether I'll come back home again." As a child, she clearly realized the dangers.

"Life was mostly fear."