During one daylight raid by American bombers on Berlin in July 1944 Wassili and I were out in the streets, as we always were if there was a raid while we were transporting the food pails. That was how we did it after our first flight from the air raid shelter, in spite of the danger that we might be arrested as potential looters. Looting was punishable by death. But we relied on the fact that policemen were only human and would rather take shelter themselves in an air raid. So we sat down on the curb by a piece of waste land and scanned the sky above us for possible threats.

The bombs seemed to be a long way away. This time we were able to distinguish clearly between the flak guns and the falling bombs. Then we suddenly saw a leaflet drifting down past the wall of one of the tenements opposite. Leaflets were very precious to us forced laborers, since we were always hoping to learn the truth about the world situation. In those days of course it didn't occur to me that the Allies, like the Nazis, were mixing truth with propaganda in their leaflets.

So the two of us dashed across the road to catch the leaflet. We heard the sound of a falling bomb. That meant we had to take cover immediately. But there wasn't any, except for a house wall. We threw ourselves to the ground. There followed a fairly heavy explosion and thick dust made it impossible to see. When the dust had settled, we saw a five meter-wide crater on the spot where we had been sitting. We patted ourselves down – nothing missing. We looked at each other, grinned and laughed aloud. We were covered with dust and dirt, but still alive! There was no trace of our leaflet. A piece of paper had saved our lives. From that moment on I was convinced that there was a God guiding my steps who wanted me to survive.