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Bielenberg, Christabel

The Past Is Myself, [39] 13

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20130901104518 Amanda Theunissen on Christabel Bielenberg, The Past Is Myself

Kindness of Strangers

Amanda Theunissen on Christabel Bielenberg, The Past Is Myself

‘If you get out now, Gnädige Frau, you can take the underground and you will be in the city in no time,’ said a fellow traveller to Christabel Bielenberg on a stationary train just outside Berlin in 1944. So she did and the train steamed off. A few miles on, American bombers attacked, killing almost everyone on board. Her life had been saved by luck – and the kindness of a stranger. It’s the stories of such small human decencies in the midst of war that make her memoir The Past Is Myself (1968) such an extraordinary book.

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