Even after the war was over, danger would come in sudden and unexpected ways. The excerpt from my memoir is from the time Mom, my brother, and I were living communist East Germany after WWII. 

“One of the places we lived was a multistory apartment building. Fellow tenants included a Russian army officer and his wife. Like almost all Russians, they had never seen running water and flush toilets. To them, a porcelain sink and a porcelain toilet looked the same except for the difference in height.

“Food was scarce for everyone, including the Russians. One day the officer purchased a small fish at a local market in Weimar. There was a little time till lunch, so his wife decided to keep it in one of the flush toilets the residents shared. Mom came to the communal bathroom with us and saw a dead fish floating in the toilet bowl. It never dawned on her that she was looking at someone’s lunch, so she flushed it. Shortly thereafter the officer came in to retrieve his fish and realized Mom had flushed it. He pulled out his pistol and put it to her head and demanded an explanation. My brother remembers those tense moments as Mom tried, in her broken Russian, to explain why she had flushed the fish.”

The book is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/31H6cSk A story of war, deprivation, courage, perseverance, and triumph.