Very highly recommended
Memories of World War II And Its Aftermath: 1940-1954 is the autobiography of Inge Stanneck Gross who grew up as a little girl in Berlin, Germany and experienced the ravages of Hitler's Third Reich and the struggle to rebuild a divided post-war Germany. Now 70 years old, the memories of Inge Gross go back to when she was five years old on the night of Sunday, August 25, 1940 and learned about air raids. The British had bombed Berlin for the first time. This was a child hood spent in bombshelters and going to school the next day to discover that some of her friends and playmates wouldn't be there -- ever. Eventually going with her mother and younger brother to a small village fifty miles from Berlin to escape the bombings, towards the end of the war the family was to experience even that village being bombed and overrun by the Russians. The family barely managed to make it back to Berlin in late 1946 before the Russians totally closed the border and the Cold War began. Memories of World War II And Its Aftermath: 1940-1954 brings the perspective of a small child and her mother's fight to keep the family alive during wartime vividly to life. It is also the story of how the Allies kept Inge and 2.2 million other West Berliners alive during Stalin's blockade of Berlin in 1948 and 1949. The memoir ends in 1954 when at the age of 19, Inge immigrated to the United States. Also very highly recommended is the second volume of Inge's memoirs, Memories Of Opportunities, Family And Adventures which detailed the account of her life in America down to the present time.
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review