My aunt Beate was 92 years old.

After the war, she directed the anger she carried around against her only two siblings who had had children, sisters Magda and Elfriede.

In old age she holed up in her parents' house in Stuttgart-Degerloch, which had become her sole property through manipulation, and refused any contact with the family.

Magda and Elfriede puzzled to the end of their lives as to why their parents had agreed to this de facto disinheritance of the other children.

The sentence with which they ended their discussions always remained the same: "Had Heinz still been alive, this would not have happened." Heinz was the older brother, born in 1921;

he died as a soldier in March 1945.

Evi Simeoni

sports editor.

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In Beate's will it said: "I exclude my family and their descendants from the inheritance." It inherited a charitable foundation.

Still, I managed to get the executor to let me and a cousin re-enter the house before the sale.

We were allowed to take things of no material value, such as photo albums and family papers.

In Beate's desk we found two boxes containing 281 letters from my uncle Heinz to his parents and siblings.

When I spotted them, I was amazed to hear myself say, "Oh, there they are!"

◆◆◆

Kremsier, December 3, 1939

Dear Elfrida!

On Thursday afternoon, while the weapons were being cleaned, a non-commissioned officer suddenly came into our room and said to me and 5 other men, get ready immediately, an order had just come in that we had to guard a shooting range.

I had wanted to go to the cinema that evening, so I was a little annoyed.

We were getting ready, mail was still being distributed, and your letter came.

Since I didn't have time to read it, I put it in my pocket.

We marched out into the night and after three quarters of an hour we arrived at the shooting range in the forest.

There was a small house with the guardhouse.

We found wood and made a fire.

By candlelight I took your letter out of my pocket and read it.

So you see, under very romantic circumstances.

We had to do a watch there every 4 hours for 2 hours, two at a time.

In the other time you could sleep on a wooden bunk.

But we watched binoculars and read by candlelight again, because you can't sleep properly there.

As the two of us stood guard in the forest by the starry sky, I remembered the song: Argonne Forest... It's very nice to dream of home and of all of you.

Once we heard a deer scream, that was really to my liking.

Silesian workers came at 7 a.m., poor devils in ragged clothes.

One said to me in broken German "Swap boots".

Then he showed me his shoe, to which he had tied the sole with a rope, and you sank up to your ankles in dirt and water.

When we got home, we went to take a shower.

You can imagine how wonderful that was.

Greetings to you now

Your faithful brother Heinz

◆◆◆

I was amazed at how fresh these letters looked, even though the oldest were written more than eighty years ago.

Most of the time the paper was smooth, the ink was blue, and the writing was careful and clear.

They looked as if no one had looked at them and had not received a ray of light since the author's death in February 1945.

The tales of opened sarcophagi came to mind, in which one can see the young body of a deceased one last time in all its beauty, but only for a few seconds before it crumbles to dust.

I was startled and quickly closed the boxes again.