On the weekend it was time to speak with my sister in Germany. For about 40 years, she has been living in Göttingen (Lower Saxony), the old and progressive “city of the sciences,” with a famous university, much illustrious history, as well as an utterly charming old medieval center. Wikipedia Göttingen

Dinah has been working for the City as a scientist and expert for environmental and climate protection for the past 35 years. As the head of various departments, and mostly in close collaboration with the mayor. Everyone knows her when I visit :) For 40 years she has been warning what is happening now world wide with the climate emergencies.

On Sunday she told me about the recent discoveries of many bombs from the Second World War, wherever there is building going on in Göttingen. And just a couple of weeks ago, about 10,000 inhabitants had to be evacuated again. A huge undertaking, with lots of challenges. For a day or two no traffic, trains, busses, no businesses or schools open. Just the careful and nerve wrecking work of exploring if the bomb needs detonation or not, and how to defuse it best. She told the story of one worker actually picking up a bomb with his excavator, then luckily deciding that it looked suspicious. What incredible luck he had, we laughed. About 80 more bomb suspicions in the city are to be dealt with over time. This has come only now to light because new bombardment maps were released by the British.

I said: “This is how war never really ends!” For more than 75 years the remnants of the Allied bombings have been “sleeping” in highly populated cities – not just industrial targets. They are still lodged in the earth, still endangering people, possibly causing huge destruction of lives, and buildings. I told Dinah the story I had written on October 13th in this blog. How our family was almost flattened into the asphalt by an American military tank, out for a Sunday joy ride. She could not remember, she was only 2 or 3 years old back in 1959.

I still recall the visuals and smells of ruins and ashes, of one-legged or one-armed “invalids” as we called them. Everyone had such tragedies in their family. For me as child it was normal, and perhaps only horrific because I sensed the deep injuries and scars in people’s hearts. So many displaced people like my parents. So many dead and missing. So many stories of war and hunger. So much hidden shame and guilt. Fear still edged into cold and tight faces. I was scared of people. One elementary teacher used to knock us very hard on the head with his wooden hand – a prosthesis – bringing many of us youngsters close to fainting.

War is not for the faint. Here in America, only the families of veterans, immigrants, or refugees know about the true costs of war. It does not matter who wins the war, or who loses, it always is a most cruel and horrific affair. And its effects are rippling down many generations, lodged deep in the crevices of the human heart and in the earth.