MAY 1945: The war ends. With the Americans a new world arrives. We are free and happy to have survived. The newspaper no longer exists. I find work at Radio Frankfurt, a broadcaster for the military government. I also find my husband there – he’s just as young as I am.

AUGUST 1945: My father, who walked all the way home from Berlin, drums Czech vocabulary and grammar into me. My mother teaches me Czech songs. Because speaking German is forbidden I sing them as loudly as possible when she speaks German to her friends in the street. We have to leave our flat and move into our doctor’s surgery, who, like many Germans, panicked and committed suicide when the Russians crossed the Eastern border.