There are two Algerian documents. The first one, dated 17 June 1957 and signed by Colonel Boumédienne, Chief of Staff of the Armée des frontières, reads:

This is to attest that Si Mourad has been appointed to the training corps of the EMG as an advisor on logistics and weaponry.

CC: BE, SBLA, head of the CFEMG, heads of the technical and operational units of Wilayah 8 (communications, transport, engineering . . . )

The second, dated 8 January 1963, is signed by the General Secretary of the Officer Training Academy in Cherchell:

1) This is to confirm the appointment of the aforementioned Mourad Hans, a temporary civil instructor

2) The chief of service of personnel shall be responsible for implementing this decision.

CC: personnel department of the Ministry of Defence.

For information only: Office of Military Security, district of Algiers.

There is a battered little booklet, Papa’s military record. The writing on the front is in this really impressive German gothic type. The first page lists his personal details: Hans Schiller, born 5 June 1918 in Uelzen, son of Erich Schiller and Magda Taunbach. Address: 12B Millenstraße, Landorf, Uelzen. Education: Chemical engineering, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. His regimental number is stamped in a little box, and at the bottom of the page is the signature and the stamp of the recruiting officer: Obersturmbannführer Martin Alfons Kratz. The rest is a complicated list of the postings, transfers, ranks, promotions, citations, medals and injuries he received during his career. The pages are peppered with stamps. Papa reached the rank of Captain, he was a big shot. And he was a hero, too, he was wounded a bunch of times and he was mentioned in dispatches and decorated over and over! He was posted to Germany, Austria, France, Poland and other places which would have meant nothing to me without Rachel’s notes: Frankfurt, Linz, Grossrosen, Salzburg, Dachau, Mauthausen, Rocroi, Paris, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Ghent, Hartheim, Lublin-Majdanek. Some of the places were extermination camps. These were secret places where the Nazis exterminated the Jews and other undesirables. Rachel says hundreds of people died and the article in Historia says millions. Fucking hell, I thought.