[drofgnal]

I picked up Armagedon a little while ago when it was in the Amazon 3.99 list of titles. My mother was born and raised in Berlin, married my Dad in around 49 or 50' after the war when he was stationed there. So I had a keen interest in reading the story. Mom never talked that much about the war, and talked about the post WWII timeframe even less. I now have a better appreciation of why she didn't talk about it. I do remember as a small child she would playfully call me a 'gooney bird'. Until I just read Uris I had never known the context of that term. She also on every meal cleaned her plate completely, there was never a crumb left, feeling it was a crime to throw anything away. If we didn't finish our plates she would admonish us saying, 'finish your plate, you don't know what its like not having...'

My most vivid memory was going to berlin in 62 or 63 as a small child of around 7. We stood on a platform sort of like a gallows platform to look our over the Berlin Wall at checkpoint charlie. I remember tears welling up and streaming down my mother's face looking out over the wall at East Berlin. She had no love for the russians. In 93 at my grandmother's funeral we went into East Berlin to Alexander Platz. She got into an argument with some east German communist at King Fredricks Summer palace. (The cheap wool suits were always a dead give away.) Apparently we couldn't go inside just walk the gardens. One worker said there is nothing inside the Russians took it all. There were in the process of restoring the inside. At the cemetary my Grandmother was buried at she did tell me that they had to replace bones in family crypts. She said the Russians even took gold from teeth in the cemetery.

Reading the book and remembering some of my mother's behavior and actions along with what she did talk about , I'd say it was a fairly accurate representation of what it was like to live in Berlin post WWII. I almost wish I hadn't read it.