I shout at them. ‘You will die down there. At least up here we have a chance.’

Mutti pulls me away. It is no use reasoning with them. We have our own battle to fight – the battle to survive.

The bombers may have gone, but there is a new terror. Scorching hot currents of air, fanned by the flames, almost sucking us bodily through the streets. An artificial, superheated wind roaring in our ears.

‘The river,’ shouts Mutti, dragging me with her. ‘We must get to the river.’

Turning into one street, towards Neumarkt and the Frauenkirche, we’re confronted by a family running the opposite way – towards us. ‘You can’t go up there,’ they shout. ‘The flames are too bad.’

We turn down a side street. Above us, it’s like there’s an orange light in every window, but it’s the flames. These are solid, stone houses, I think. Why are they burning so fiercely?

I’m holding the shawl over my mouth and nose, as some protection from the flame-filled, oxygen-depleted atmosphere.

Suddenly, a flaming window frame crashes down from above. I try to get out of the way but it catches me a glancing blow on the shoulder.

Then I realise my shawl is on fire. Mutti looks at me in horror, then she’s ripping off her own coat, throwing it over me, trying to smother the flames. I feel terrible pain and heat on the left side of my face. Then Mutti is holding me, consoling me, but telling me we must get to the water.

As well as the pain from my face, my lungs are heaving as I struggle to breathe. My legs feel like they are too weak to carry me. But Mutti drags me onwards, past older people who have given up, who are just sitting in the middle of the street, arms outstretched, wailing at the angry gods in the sky, wondering what they have done to deserve this. Through all the pain, through all the desperation, for some reason I think of Arnold, and getting him to perform the ‘Sieg Heil’ for Frau Holzmann just so we could get that free ride up the Personenaufzug in Bad Schandau. When everything seemed lovely and innocent. Is that when it all turned evil and bad?

Then my mind turns back to our real purpose – to fight our way through to the terraces and water meadows of the Elbe. Yet this strange city of fire, this hell on earth, is unrecognisable and we aren’t sure where we are going.

We turn down one street – I don’t know which one because by now I’ve lost my bearings – but we’re beaten back by the roaring, superheated wind and flames, as burning debris is sent flying through the air.