How have the past few weeks been?
"Terrible," says Elisabeth Schneider.
She often sat and cried in front of the seven o'clock news.
"The poor children in the basement, you shouldn't even think about them.
And if you've done it yourself.
.
.” Schneider breaks off his voice.
Her friend Margareta Spahn steps in.
"We always had suitcases ready, and when the siren went off, we went to the basement." Because there were no air raid shelters in the country, the family sat in the basement of the house.
But it would hardly have withstood a bomb.
"I have to say I pretty much pushed it aside, but the way it started, it all came back up."
Leonie Feuerbach
Editor in Politics.
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The two women are sitting at the living room table with Elisabeth Schneider.
The apartment is part of the assisted living of the Frankfurt old people's and nursing home Hufeland-Haus.
On the flowered tablecloth are a thermos of coffee, a jug of coffee cream and a plate of butter biscuits, memories hang in the air.
The two women are 90 and 84 years old.
When World War II ended, Schneider was 13 and Spahn was eight.
It's been almost a lifetime.
Both worked, had children and grandchildren, buried their husbands.
But because of the war in Ukraine, childhood in the war is suddenly very close again.