ASIN: B00895GVJ2
Publisher: Heinz Kohler
Pages: 473
When a private plane crashes in Florida in 1991, the surviving pilot makes the strangest of remarks. “It was World War II,” he says. The National Transportation Safety Board attributes the accident to a collision with birds, but one stubborn investigator insists on going further. Before long, his inquiry reveals how the pilot’s past had trailed him on his last flight and vividly brings to life a terrifying slice of history–the story of a German boy who grows up in Berlin before, during, and after the Second World War; sadistic teachers just call him Five. The boy’s father, an opponent of the Nazis, ends up in a concentration camp and later in a penal regiment that marches through Russian mine fields to clear the way for regular troops. In contrast, one of the boy’s uncles is a fervent Nazi in charge of cleansing Hitler’s capital of every last Jew; another uncle revels in the governance ...
