Hidden Beneath the Thorns

Book excerpt: In the compelling memoir Hidden Beneath the Thorns, Ingeborg Tismer shares her fascinating journey of what it was like to be an ordinary German citizen during the Nazi regime. As told to her daughter, Gabriele Quinn, Ingeborg provides a glimpse into the world of a young woman who grew up during the reign of the Third Reich on her grandparents' farm with a pacifist mother and rigidly strict father: a father, who in order to put bread on the table, was coerced into joining Hitler's private army, the SA. Interposed with historical chronicles, Ingeborg relays how at the age of ten, she joined the branch of Hitler youth for girls, thrilled to march to the beat of Nazi drums. But Ingeborg's grandparents resisted the Nazis whenever possible and hid Jewish families in a simple hillside dugout; aided by Russian laborers placed on their farm. As the Russians advanced upon Germany in January 1945, Inge's family farm was seized by the Soviets and turned into a Kommondantura, or Field Command Post. A fascinating relationship developed and Inge's family were protected from Russian abuse. Despite this, Ingeborg and the remainder of her family were forced to live within dusty piles of broken bricks, sickly smells, and hungry survivors in the remnants of post-war Berlin when all Germans had to leave the area east of the Oder River. Throughout the book, Ingeborg's story chronicles how Adolf Hitler was able to seize and mold an entire people into a machine of madness and how the sanity of the outside world finally brought it all to an end.