“Yes, at the time. Shortly afterward, in Germany.” (Exchange of glances.)

“Why weren’t you interned?”

“We were comrades-in-arms!”

(Distraught look at Christa. Irony is malice.)

“And your compatriots, the Romanians—you just ditched them?”

“My mother’s Austrian. So I was one of the so-called ethnic Germans.”

“But nevertheless, you didn’t get drafted?”

“No. I didn’t get returned home to the Reich with other ethnic Germans, so I had a pass declaring me a stateless person.” (And all sorts of other equally dubious papers.)

Christa locks eyes with the questioner. “You could have exchanged it for a German passport.”

“Nope. In wartime you couldn’t become a German citizen without being a German soldier. And vice versa: you couldn’t be a German soldier without having German citizenship.” (I could have added that, bastard that I was, I had no father to show either. I might not have been—God forbid!—pure Aryan, might even have been half Jewish or at least half Gypsy. After all, my mother’s family was from Bosnia. But out of consideration for Christa I didn’t say so.)

“And so?”

“And so I was a stateless person in a Germany at war and that’s why I couldn’t get out of Germany.” (I could have added that thanks to Uncle Ferdinand, I was working as a multilingual interpreter in the Romanian embassy, armed with more than transparent documents that were, however, plastered with enough seals and stamps to awe the German officials. Nor did I mention that at the critical moment when my cover—my whole beautiful camouflage system—was about to be blown, I had, as it were, volunteered for the German Army—cynically, knowing full well that I could never be inducted. The Gestapo was getting ready to take a deeper look into my situation. But volunteering made me a hero on the home front.)

“And you just watched while others were putting their lives on the line?”

“For what?”

“Well really! For Germany, naturally. I mean, everyone for his ideals, of course. For Volk und Vaterland. For his traditions.”

“I have neither the one nor the other.”

“Right. Exactly. Remarkable in any event.” (Drawn-out exchange of sympathetic looks with Christa.)

“And how did you end up in Nuremberg?”

“As a witness.”

“Witness to what?”

“Murder.”

“Murder tout court?”

“Murder tout court.” (Somewhat paltry for Nuremberg, I admit, where if you couldn’t testify to the murder of at least a couple thousand, you didn’t even rate a spoon in the canteen.)

The questioner now turned to face Christa directly and look her in the eye. “What about you, Christa? How did you get to Nuremberg?”

“I was with Grandma.” Blinking her round eyes. “She had to testify about Grandpa being executed for the Twentieth of July plot.”

Head nodding sympathetically: “Did your grandmother know anything about your grandfather’s heroic resistance?”

“Not much. She was too busy keeping house and running the estate. Canning and such. We were self-sufficient.” (A paradise from which they were driven by the Russians, as everyone knew. A bitter fate. I could have added, moreover, that this was after the German comrades-in-arms had killed Christa’s parents.)