When Bernhard Schlink’s home in Bielefeld was destroyed by Allied bombs during the second world war, a wagoner who helped his mother retrieve their furniture from the wreckage expressed an unconventional thought — that the Germans had only themselves to blame.
“We saw the synagogues burn, we know why our cities are burning now,” he told Schlink’s mother as they rode past bombed-out buildings.
“That deeply impressed her,” the writer says, “because very few people felt that at…
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