Loading summary
Transcript182 lines
- [00:01]
Suzanne Rico
Hi, everyone, it's Suzanne Rico. Just a quick reminder that new episodes of the man who Calculated Death are available for free every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. And now onto the show.
- [00:18]
Gabrielle
I came to explore what it means to die, and now here I am. I'm pretty close.
- [00:31]
Narrator
It's March of 2013 in Cupertino, California.
- [00:35]
Gabrielle
And so far, it hasn't been uninteresting.
- [00:41]
Narrator
And my mom's bedroom, let me just zoom out. With its view of the green, Silicon Valley is crowded with friends and family. Can you say something to your nana and look right at the camera?
- [00:52]
Tante Heidi
We love your Nana.
- [00:55]
Narrator
We've all said everything we need to say. I love our Nana, but that doesn't stop us from saying it over and over again. Love you, love you, love you. As if love could stop the world from turning.
- [01:07]
Tante Heidi
I love you.
- [01:09]
Gabrielle
Bunches. Bunches. Huge bunches.
- [01:19]
Narrator
After investigating my grandmother's death in the last episode, it felt right to start with. My mom's in this one. How do you feel about it all? Mom, Are you scared?
- [01:29]
Gabrielle
Um, no, I'm not scared anymore.
- [01:36]
Narrator
We actually thought she was going out on March 13, the same day her mother did, when a bomb hit the farmhouse where Hilda had sought refuge with her kids.
- [01:45]
Gabrielle
Right now, I don't need negativity.
- [01:48]
Narrator
But death doesn't adhere to schedules, and Gabrielle held on for two more days.
- [01:53]
Gabrielle
I need love.
- [01:55]
Narrator
A longtime college professor, she kept the lessons coming until the very end.
- [02:02]
Gabrielle
And I need to be able to carry that with me into whatever mystery awaits me and actually awaits all of us.
- [02:16]
Narrator
Mystery. The word defined my mother's childhood, her father's top secret work that made him a shadowy stranger. A war sparked by hatred she didn't understand or share. Her mother taking a nap and never getting up again. My mom died without ever knowing whether the family legend was true. That the bombs dropped that day were actually a revenge strike against my grandfather for his work on vengeance weapon number one. The job of solving that mystery was mine now, and there were clues to be found in her story of what happened in the wake of disaster.
- [03:03]
Tante Trouty
Two old ladies come to the wrecked farmhouse. It is so black out here, so cold.
- [03:11]
Narrator
This is from a memoir chapter my mom titled simply Aftermath.
- [03:16]
Tante Trouty
They take us away. I don't know where we are going or how long we will stay. The only picture in my head is of Muti crying so quietly at the window.
- [03:30]
Narrator
Those two old ladies, along with the other village women, were the ones who stepped up to help. In March of 1945, all the able bodied men were either dead or still fighting. Those left behind to pick up the pieces of their broken country were called Trummefrawen Rubble women. And once the dust and smoke cleared from the ruins of the Stuttnehof, Tante Heide says those Trommelflauen got down to work.
- [04:01]
Tante Heidi
They were picking up the bombed out, you know, a piece of clothing or a pot or the debris, debris. And they said this belongs to the Lazers and this belongs to the other people.
- [04:13]
Narrator
And so pots and pans, paperwork and photo albums Hilda had saved from the fire in Kassel were all jumbled together with shattered timbers, broken glass and the farmer's stuff. Separating the treasure from the trash took weeks. And it was backbreaking boring work. Until the day when one of the rebel women's teenage sons found something that wasn't boring at all.
- [04:42]
Tante Heidi
It was a three ring binder. It's called a Leitz Otner. Leitz Otner L E I T.
- [04:54]
Narrator
Black standard issue. The lights Ordener's cover held no clue to who owned it. So the teenager flipped it open and.
- [05:03]
Tante Heidi
When he opened it up, he said oh.
- [05:06]
Narrator
Inside was a story of warplanes and wonder weapons. A detailed and damning account of one engineer's work for the Nazi regime.
- [05:18]
Tante Heidi
And he stole the three ring binder and took it home to his farmhouse.
- [05:28]
Narrator
But that stolen black binder wouldn't stay there for long. Because once that teenager had read it all the way through, he decided the story it contained needed to be told.
- [05:44]
Tante Heidi
A new chapter opens. The Battle of the Flying Bombs.
- [05:48]
Narrator
I'm Suzanne Rico and this is the man who calculated death. Episode 7 the Dark Road of the.
- [05:57]
Tante Heidi
Future the birds are about to fly.
- [06:01]
Gabrielle
I see black in the future.
- [06:04]
Narrator
Come in, come in.
- [06:06]
Gabrielle
This is an invitation.
- [06:08]
Narrator
This is gonna blow your mind. Because it blew my mind.
- [06:10]
Tante Heidi
So you listen really well.
- [06:13]
Narrator
This is the only. This is the original of the man calculated death.
- [06:18]
Robert Lesser
The man who calculated Death. Der Mann der Dentold er reghnete.
- [06:34]
Gabrielle
So we should go inside.
- [06:36]
Suzanne Rico
Let's open.
- [06:39]
Narrator
It's that door. The little yellow church in Bernau is a throwback in time. Wooden pews worn shiny with use. A pipe organ and gauzy light illuminating saints and a wooden crucifix.
- [06:56]
Gabrielle
This is where they came. This is where they describe the blue stained glass windows.
- [07:05]
Narrator
This is where my grandmother's funeral was held. Heidi and Troutie, then 12 and 14, sat straight and rigid in these same pews as the priest said a quick prayer.
- [07:17]
Gabrielle
But then that was it. Then it was all about survival.
- [07:19]
Narrator
They had no time to mourn. No luxury of grief. How can you when you're hungry? You can't. You don't have a surviving and everything's in ruins around you. How do you even process that and have time to grieve? You don't even know you should. The girls were the only family members present. Sleet blew in their faces as they walked outside to the cemetery, where Tanta Trouty remembers the gravediggers just wanting to get it over with.
- [07:57]
Robert Lesser
That was terrible for me because they did it all by hand, you know, with four guys and ropes. And then they gave the command, but they weren't all equally strong. And the coffin just banged back and forth until it was finally down. And they said we should step forward and throw some dirt in the grave.
- [08:29]
Suzanne Rico
On the coffin.
- [08:30]
Robert Lesser
On the coffin.
- [08:32]
Narrator
Gabi. My mom still thought Hilda was in the hospital with a broken leg. And the girl's father, he was far away in Berlin, working on the flying bomb.
- [08:44]
Tante Heidi
It was a mess in Germany, and he was trying to work out the bugs out of the V1's guidance system. Even though everyone knew that the war was lost, you couldn't. I mean, nobody said it out loud, and he just was trying to stay alive until the war's end.
- [09:05]
Narrator
The war's end was only six weeks away, but Berlin was the most dangerous place in the country, with Russia's Red army surrounding it.
- [09:15]
Tante Heidi
Everybody would say, the Russians are coming. Fight, fight, fight. The Russians are coming. And the Russian military command gave them permission to do mayhem. They said, those damn Germans have it coming.
- [09:27]
Narrator
To make matters worse, Adolf Hitler, crazed and cornered in his so called, had decreed that all citizens must fight to the death.
- [09:39]
Tante Heidi
The order was given to defend the city to the last man. They issued the Volkssturmgewehr, simple little weapons. And anyone who tried to leave the city was shot.
- [09:57]
Narrator
My grandfather, along with everyone else, was stuck leave and his own countrymen might shoot him or stay and face the Russians. Prevailing wisdom was if the Russians get you, you're screwed.
- [10:10]
Tante Heidi
You're screwed.
- [10:12]
Narrator
But sometimes fate arranges our stories.
- [10:16]
Tante Heidi
And then he got the telegram.
- [10:19]
Narrator
Throws fastballs that shatter the future we think is coming.
- [10:23]
Tante Heidi
And a telegram didn't come quickly, you know, in those days, it took forever.
- [10:29]
Narrator
This telegram took two weeks. And when it finally arrived, my grandfather saw it was dated March 13, 1945. Just one short sentence typed in capital letters on flimsy paper. But those words blurred into a dark line that would forever divide his life into before and after.
- [10:56]
Tante Heidi
This telegram said something really simple. Wife Dead. Come at once. Nothing about wife, dead children, okay? It just said, frau, tod se vadkommen.
- [11:09]
Narrator
Come at once. Not so easy. But somehow my grandfather was able to convince the military command that he needed to get to his children.
- [11:19]
Tante Heidi
And they gave him a car and gasoline and he had permission that he could drive, you know, and all those checkpoints that he could get through, that he could get through. And so that's what he did. That's how he got out of Berlin.
- [11:36]
Narrator
Tanta Heidi believes that gut punch of a telegram was also her father's salvation.
- [11:43]
Suzanne Rico
Let me ask you this.
- [11:45]
Narrator
What do you think would have happened if your mom hadn't been killed?
- [11:50]
Tante Heidi
He would have been taken to Russia and probably died there. She died in order for him to get out of the Russian zone.
- [11:59]
Narrator
I always thought that in his government car, gas cans strapped to the back. My grandfather headed straight south. A 700 kilometer drive through a gutted country toward a life ruined beyond repair.
- [12:18]
Robert Lesser
We were all lined up in. In front of the door, and dad stopped his car and walked up and absolutely broke down sobbing. Only time I've seen him cry.
- [12:38]
Tante Heidi
He cried so hard that his body shook. You know, we'd never seen our father cry like that. He was just sobbing. And we stood there horrified because he was beside himself with grief. I do not remember that he embraced that. He did not. He did not take us into his arm or kneel down. He just sobbed.
- [13:10]
Narrator
The love of his life, the mother of his kids and his best friend. My grandfather never got to say goodbye.
- [13:20]
Tante Heidi
When he arrived, the funeral was already held. You know what I mean? He came too late for all of that. He was already in the ground.
- [13:40]
Narrator
Schicksal. It's the German word for fate, defined as an inevitable and often adverse outcome. It's a power that some people believe controls all events, such as death or defeat. Tanteheidi believes it was her mother's Schicksal to die young. That some sixth sense going back to her Roma roots led Hilda to change beds with her children that winter day. A swap of her life for theirs. And in the bargain, she saved her husband, too. But it's hard not to question destiny. Finding deeper meaning in death is a human desire. And so our minds search for a reason hidden just out of sight.
- [14:27]
Tante Heidi
These are older ones.
- [14:28]
Narrator
And sure enough, in our mother's office, tucked into a manila folder, Stephanie and I discover a devastating truth. Look at the writing. Oh, my gosh. It's a postcard. The last love letter my grandmother ever wrote, dated four days before her Death. It was sent to Robert in Berlin. My dearest, I've asked my German cousin Fiona to read my grandmother's words.
- [14:56]
Fiona
Today I received your most welcome letter of 16th February 1945.
- [15:03]
Narrator
Since mail was subject to heavy Nazi censorship, my grandmother kept her words cryptic, writing that she was diligently reading the work of Swiss philosopher Jacob Burchard.
- [15:15]
Fiona
He's helping me to take careful steps onto the dark road of the future with a sense of composure. And I do not exaggerate who, when I express what is absolutely correct, that through you my life has true meaning.
- [15:33]
Narrator
This declaration doesn't surprise me. One of the constants I've heard about my grandmother is that she was a dedicated Fraule of her time. A little wife who put her husband above all else.
- [15:46]
Fiona
What you told me about your fulfilling camaraderie in your professional life fills me with great pride. And as to your worth, only this enables me to carry the ache of separation a little more easily.
- [16:02]
Narrator
But at the farmhouse, Hilda wasn't coping well. Even though the five year war was almost over. My mom remembers her mother spending hours staring out the attic window.
- [16:15]
Tante Trouty
I think she doesn't look out at all, but it's something sad inside. There are no toys to play with. So Uli and I jump on the beds. We get so hungry.
- [16:30]
Narrator
In Hilda's final postcard, my sister and I find a clue that there was much more to our grandmother's sadness than war and heartache.
- [16:39]
Fiona
In the meantime, in Salzburg, they determined that my body weight is much too light for such a kind of operation. And since there is no hope for a stay in a health clinic to fatten me up, I will continue to endure the unacceptable with patience.
- [16:59]
Narrator
Endure the unacceptable. Since my grandmother was only 41 years old when she wrote this, it's confusing. So, like always, my sister and I head straight to Tantahidi's house in Sacramento, California. You want a fork or a spoon?
- [17:16]
Tante Heidi
A fork.
- [17:18]
Narrator
We're all sharing a very German lunch. Black bread, sausage and sharp mustard. Just try a little bit of this though, and see if it's hot enough. Heidi doesn't eat much these days and is really weak. But when I bring up the subject of her mother's last postcard, she perks up, almost agitated.
- [17:38]
Tante Heidi
I was with my mother in Salzburg at the doctors. Okay. Why did she take a 12 year old child with her to go to the doctor?
- [17:49]
Narrator
This appointment must have been very important. Doctors were few and far between at the end of the war and Hilda had to walk to the train station and make the dangerous trip to Austria to see one. She and Heidi arrived just as the air raid sirens started to wail.
- [18:10]
Tante Heidi
And we sit for four hours in a Luftchudz bunker and wait for the sirens to go up before she could see the doctor. Yes. And then we were called over to the hospital and we sat there and they called Hildegard Lussa and she goes in and within 15 minutes she was back out. And she was crying. They looked at her, she was emaciated. She weighed 102 pounds. And they say, go home.
- [18:41]
Narrator
My grandmother's last written words are just haunting.
- [18:45]
Fiona
The children need me more than ever. So the risk for such a kind of operation is too great to undertake. I cling fast to the the belief that we will be permitted to live our lives which had such a happy beginning to the end together.
- [19:06]
Tante Heidi
She knew she was dying.
- [19:08]
Narrator
She was sick already.
- [19:09]
Tante Heidi
She was sick already.
- [19:10]
Fiona
I kissed you with all my heart. Your Hilda.
- [19:15]
Tante Heidi
And she was far away when I.
- [19:21]
Narrator
Asked the obvious follow up question. Do you think she had cancer? It feels like all the anger and grief my aunt has been suppressing for years about her mother's death finally boils over.
- [19:34]
Tante Heidi
Of course she had cancer. She was skin and bones. And the reason she was crying was because she knew it and she had to hide it.
- [19:44]
Narrator
No records survive of any medical appointments, so we'll never know for sure what kind of cancer my grandmother had, but I can make a pretty good guess. My mom, Gabrielle, was first diagnosed with cancer just before her 40th birthday. Colon cancer. And tests showed it was caused by a genetic mutation. A mutation she inherited from her mother.
- [20:12]
Tante Trouty
The closer I got to my mother's age when she died, 41, the worse the panic became. I felt sure I would not live beyond her.
- [20:25]
Narrator
Stephanie and I only learned that our mother lived with this fear from reading her memoir.
- [20:30]
Tante Heidi
I gotta go. I gotta take my stuff with me.
- [20:33]
Narrator
I'll bring it. And after our Tanta goes down for a nap, Steph put water by her bed. My sister and I head out to Heidi's sunny backyard.
- [20:42]
Gabrielle
Oh, I'm gonna hate to lose her.
- [20:46]
Narrator
To process what we've just learned about a loss that came so early it hurts to imagine. It makes me so sad when I.
- [20:58]
Gabrielle
Think about our kids.
- [20:59]
Narrator
And if we were to just die.
- [21:03]
Gabrielle
Like what they would, they would have very little left. I mean, because it takes your whole life to kind of encompass who your parents are and you're left with just a piece. I mean, mom was left with almost nothing from her own mother. Just a little bit here and there. I miss her so much.
- [21:33]
Suzanne Rico
This episode is sponsored by Better Help. If there's one thing history teaches us, it's that human beings have always struggled with uncertainty, anxiety, pressure and the weight of their choices. But today, unlike our ancestors, we don't have to go it alone. BetterHelp is the modern solution to an age old need. It's online therapy designed to be accessible, affordable and tailored to your schedule, not the other way around. With over 30,000 licensed therapists, BetterHelp makes it easy to connect with someone who understands what you're going through, whether it's anxiety, burnout or just trying to set better boundaries. And you can message your therapist anytime. Schedule weekly sessions, and if the match isn't quite right, it's easy to switch with no added stress. And the best part? It's more affordable than traditional therapy. On average, up to 50% less. No commutes, no waiting rooms, just thoughtful personalized help whenever and wherever you need it. History is full of complicated people. Don't be afraid to learn from them and then do things a little differently. Visit betterhelp.comtheman to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P.comtheman.
- [22:59]
Narrator
This is my mom and her sisters singing a song they learned as World War II ended in the spring of 1945. The lyrics are we have huge hunger. That's it. And my mom, who was seven then, remembers how her sisters sang it to lighten the grim reality that they had almost nothing to eat.
- [23:23]
Tante Trouty
That's the whole song. But when they sing it, it gets louder and funnier until it seems that being hungry is not a bad thing at all.
- [23:34]
Tante Heidi
Who started? Me.
- [23:38]
Narrator
She taught it to me and my sisters when we were kids, and we still laugh when we sing it, even though we've never known a day of hunger in our After Hilda died, the kids had to do much more than sing to survive.
- [23:59]
Tante Heidi
Everybody had a job, you know, and I was skinny and so they told me that I had to go in and do the begging and I did a pretty good job of it.
- [24:13]
Narrator
With her dad now unemployed in Germany in tatters, 12 year old Heidi walked miles every day.
- [24:19]
Tante Heidi
This was all after the war, when the distribution of the food had completely been destroyed. You know, I tell them my mother is dead and I've got brothers and sisters and we are so hungry.
- [24:35]
Narrator
My aunt's stories from this time are both sad and funny. Like when Skinny hungry Heidi begged Bernau's Miller for some flour.
- [24:45]
Tante Heidi
I Think I started crying. And so he looked at me and he said, oh, come on. And he took my rucksack. I had no back in it or anything. And he went and it filled up completely. Shoot, how heavy is that? And then I walked home and I was so tired. I sat down on a bench and then I couldn't get back up. And some guy came by on a bicycle and he got off and he helped me out and I walked home.
- [25:23]
Narrator
In her memoir, my mom also describes walking home after begging.
- [25:28]
Tante Trouty
In the dark, I hear whisperings even though I can't see anything. There's no moon to make any even a little light. I try to sing a song into the night, but it catches in my throat and gets stuck there.
- [25:47]
Narrator
Fear is always with the Lesser kids. The five of them plus their dad are now living in one room in Bernau. London certainly had as much right as.
- [25:57]
Tante Heidi
Anywhere to celebrate victory.
- [25:58]
Narrator
And as the United States and Great Britain celebrate the war's end with parades and parties, rejoicing was osthorash. Bavaria is changing fast.
- [26:08]
Tante Heidi
The German army was retreating up from Italy, you know, and they would straggle by and then came total silence for about three or four days. And then everybody said, the Americans are coming, The Americans are coming. And lo and behold, here they came, sitting on their personnel carriers, sitting there, eating their K rations. They even had tanks with a gun in front and they would sit on top of it and rumble by. And of course we were looking out, we were scared. We did not greet them as saviors.
- [26:45]
Narrator
You were scared?
- [26:46]
Tante Heidi
We were scared.
- [26:48]
Narrator
My grandfather is scared too. A grown up secret fear. As chief Designer of the V1 and the Bf109 warplane, he figures he's on the Allies radar. He'd escaped the Russians in Berlin, but now American soldiers occupy Bavaria and he has no idea if he's on their list of war criminals. So Robert Lesser keeps a low profile, but his kids don't always cooperate.
- [27:19]
Tante Heidi
One morning we were in that house where we were moved into. Upstairs. I was looking out and what do I see? My little brother with blue little pants standing on the side of the road. Heil. Hello.
- [27:34]
Suzanne Rico
Heil.
- [27:35]
Tante Heidi
Hello.
- [27:36]
Narrator
Yep, three year old Uli is standing there with his hand raised in the Nazi salute and I went, oh, they're.
- [27:44]
Tante Heidi
Going to shoot him. I'll leave him. No, I won't. Yes, I will. And then I finally decided to rescue him and I ran down and I grabbed him to carry him in. And I expected to be shot any minute. And then something hit me. Lots of stuff hit Me, and I look at the soldiers had taken their candy out of the K rations and went throwing it to me. And I put my brother down. I started picking it up.
- [28:18]
Narrator
The Americans are friendly enough, but to the kids, they're still foreigners.
- [28:23]
Tante Heidi
In Panau, they had the central fountain, and there was this guard standing, and he was black. I had never seen a black man before. And I was still so, so influenced that the enemy, you know, that they would do something. And curfew was coming to an end. You had to be home. And I still had a long ways to go. And so I eyed him, you know, and walked past him. And he puts his hand in his pocket and he reaches out with an orange. And I wanted that orange more than anything. And so I buried my pride and my fear. And I went over there and I snatched the orange. And then I looked up, and he had the biggest grin on his face. And I said, thank you. Not thank you, but thank you.
- [29:34]
Narrator
Pretty soon, those foreigners are the Lussers housemates.
- [29:38]
Tante Heidi
They quartered the returning soldiers in our house.
- [29:43]
Narrator
Just think about it. These timid but resourceful German kids and their dad, who may or may not be a wanted war criminal, are now living with their former enemy.
- [29:55]
Tante Heidi
And they brought army bunks and put them in there, and they stayed there and they showed us maps, and they said, I'm from Ohio. And they were dying to go home.
- [30:07]
Narrator
The American soldiers, never realizing that one of Germany's most prominent engineers was right under their noses, even share their food.
- [30:17]
Robert Lesser
We got American pea soup powder compressed. And I tell you, that was the best food.
- [30:27]
Narrator
The girls stop begging and start working.
- [30:29]
Tante Heidi
Troudy was allowed to sow it in a farmhouse. I was allowed to weed. I was not very good, but I weeded and I got fed for my labor, you know, Pfannkuchen, they had eggs.
- [30:45]
Robert Lesser
We had each other. And so you cannot squash the youthful spirit.
- [30:54]
Narrator
Even their father finds a job as the official translator between the Americans and Bernau's burgomeister. After a winter of complete chaos, summer's on the horizon and everyone begins to relax. Until one day when a group of uniformed Allied officers no one has ever seen before drive into Bernau, asking strange questions.
- [31:23]
Tante Heidi
I was the one who walked along the Bannau street to the Stetnerhof once, after the curfew. And that's when the jeep came. And the guy motioned me over and he said, do you speak English? And I said, a little. And he had a map. And he said, do you know where this is? And I saw that it was Stutten.
- [31:51]
Narrator
Stutten or the Stutttenhof. The farmhouse was marked with an X.
- [31:59]
Tante Heidi
And I thought, holy shit. How do they know this? Wow. And so he made me stand on the runner, on the triplet. He put his arms around me. He told his driver to drive carefully. And we drove up to the bombed out Stettenhove where they were cleaning up and this officer interrogated everybody as to who died. Now, if that isn't weird.
- [32:30]
Narrator
It is weird. Were those officers checking to see if the bombs had killed my grandfather? Trying to finish the job maybe? Or serve an arrest warrant? Robert Lesser stayed in the shadows that day. But any relief he might have felt in giving those officers the slip was short lived. Because there was another cloud on the horizon. A storm brewing among his own countrymen, the villagers who'd been helping his family survive. And it all centered around that black binder.
- [33:08]
Tante Heidi
It's called a light, partner. L, E, I, T, Z.
- [33:13]
Narrator
In it was my grandfather's career history. Every achievement documented in black and white.
- [33:20]
Tante Heidi
The last thing was at the girling telegram. That's the very last thing.
- [33:28]
Narrator
Remember that telegram? The one Hitler's right hand man stand when my grandfather was awarded the Knight's Cross.
- [33:36]
Tante Heidi
Best wishes for the future Reichsmarschal Hermann Goering.
- [33:41]
Narrator
After reading through the entire Leitz Odne, the teenager who'd stolen it took it straight to the priest of the Yellow Church.
- [33:50]
Tante Heidi
Then that young kid showed him what he had found. Right, right, right.
- [33:55]
Narrator
But what's the significance of that? So that they saw that and what.
- [33:59]
Tante Heidi
Did they then think? That we were Nazis. That my dad was a Nazi. And so the preacher preached from the pulpit. Those of you who help that Nazi in your middle will go to hell.
- [34:18]
Narrator
Suddenly, no more Van Kuchen. No more sewing or weeding or translating. Those villagers, exhausted from war and a regime that had destroyed their nation and sacrificed their sons, weren't taking any chances. And one by one, doors slammed in the Lesser's faces.
- [34:42]
Robert Lesser
We went to the village store to get some milk. And there was a big line. And I was the next one to go in. And so they pushed from the back. And the shop lady shoved the door right on my hand.
- [35:03]
Narrator
The exile was baffling to children who didn't understand why the farmers in whose.
- [35:09]
Tante Trouty
House we were staying wanted us out. And they made it clear that we had to go.
- [35:16]
Narrator
On July 11, 1945, my mom turned 8 years old, without a friend in the world.
- [35:24]
Tante Trouty
Into the mix of my fear and loneliness went the cold shoulder from the villagers.
- [35:30]
Narrator
And shortly after that dismal birthday, my grandfather decided he needed to uproot his family once again. It would be the seventh move in my mother's young life.
- [35:44]
Tante Trouty
He found an orphanage run by a friend of someone he knew and arranged for us to go there. The celebrated aeronautical engineer would be the handyman. After losing our mother, it seemed things couldn't get worse. They did.
- [36:11]
Narrator
Coming up on the man who Calculated Death.
- [36:14]
Tante Heidi
Hostilities will end at 1 minute after midnight, Tuesday 8th May.
- [36:22]
Gabrielle
This looks pretty much the same, I think.
- [36:24]
Narrator
Can you imagine? Like 40 kids stuffed in there.
- [36:27]
Fiona
Yeah.
- [36:28]
Tante Trouty
I creep down the dark hallway toward the bathroom and I hear myself screaming.
- [36:34]
Gabrielle
This is the place of the ghostly hand. Those were the stories of our childhood, you know? Now we're seeing them here.
- [36:43]
Tante Heidi
Why would the bombs hit this remote farmhouse in Bavaria? Why? And who? In one plane, one left. The group circled and dropped the bomb.
- [36:57]
Narrator
The evidence fits. A mosquito coming in low altitude with a directed a targeted raid on the farmhouse. Look at that. The only thing that could be better.
- [37:08]
Suzanne Rico
Is a big X over the st.
- [37:10]
Narrator
So I. I think I found a plane that may be our bomber in question.
- [37:17]
Tante Trouty
But there's a.
- [37:24]
Narrator
That's next time on the man who Calculated Death, an original series from Discount Sushi, a novel. The show is written, reported and produced by me, Suzanne Rico. And if you're enjoying it, please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, including family photos, videos and archival material, go to the manwhocalculateddeath.com thanks so much for listening.