Reviews

I was amazed when I received this beautiful book in the mail - and signed by Hildegard!  I had heard of the astrocities that the Germans had done during WWII, but this was a different perspective than I had never heard before.  Hildegard tells what the era was like, what is was like to live in Berlin, to be bombed over and over.  That to speak against Hitler could cost you your life, and that of your families.  How through this she married, and her husband Fritz, had to join the German Army (for refusing you would be shot on the spot).  The perils that Fritz had to endure fighting the Russians.  And then after the war, how the Russians came, raping and killing, followed by mass starvation, and then trying to escape to the American sectors and trying to make a living, and lastly making it to America.  

I learned that there can be good and evil on all sides of a war, and love can prevail.
           Jim Boykin

I have been reading Ja, ja Mein Kind. I found it exciting, educational and thought provoking. You are an interesting and exciting story teller, and I believe the book will meet with success on the market.

          Bob Hardy
          S.C.O.R.E. (American small business counselors)

Many of us American Jews stereotyped all German citizens under Hitler as Nazi sympathizers. Hildegard's wonderful book changed all that for me. I urge Jews everywhere to read her inspiring life story. It has a healing power that lifts the human spirit, and I highly recommend it.

          Sylvia Honig

Hildegard tells of life's love, labour and, last not least, laughter in Berlin. She tells of good and bad Nazis and Germans and also good Russian soldiers. You can trust her vigorous, tender and humorous authenticity. And as her postscript says: Hildegard lived mostly as a Sunday-child without having been born one. Not to forget Fritz, her even more stubbornly sunny husband.

          Prof. em. Dr.Wolfgang Wittkowski, Albany NY

Many people have written about the Hitler years, and the war. But you manage to speak in a very calm personal way about the huge, dark events of that time of our lives, in a way that preserves the darkness and the hugeness of the History, but at the same time the beauty and the laughter, and all the small ordinary ways in which people hold on to the precious texture of live in the middle of disaster. Your voice is very familiar and many things you describe are part of my life too.

          Madeleine Springer, Philmont NY

(Comments from German readers from the Staatszeitung where it was running as a serialized novel for a whole year.)

Your story was the very first thing I read, when the newspaper arrived..

I was in Berlin at the same time, and it was exactly as you bring it.

I know you after reading your book

This book is  full of life and love

I could not stop reading. I finished it in one night.