Once I Lived     by Natascha Wodin, Translated by I Galbraith Original title: Einmal lebte ich Original language: German Published by Serpent's Tail Publishing Ltd Pub. Date: 1994 Format: Paperback, 224 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 7.78 x 0.81 x 5.06 ISBN: 1852422211 List Price: $14.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £8.99 Published by Serpent's Tail Pub. Date: 1992 Format: Paperback, 210 pages List Price: £8.99 Not available for ordering

Natascha Wodin’s story of an outsider in a hostile country at the end of the World War Two, was awarded the Brothers Grimm Prize on its publication in 1989.

The book tells the struggle of a foreign child to master the language, to improve her situation in the Germany of the 1950s and 60s, where there was, as now, violent intolerance of immigrants. Born in Germany to Russian parents, the child grows up in the ghetto of ‘the houses’ — the slum row where poor non-Germans live — rejected by her peers at school and, after the suicide of her troubled mother, at the mercy of a violent and domineering father.

Her hopes of a better life, of being accepted through marriage to a German man and of the cruel bright lights of the High Street as a forbidden paradise, are the themes of the narrative. Fearing her father’s reaction to her bad school report, the girl wears her red high-heeled shoes, steals some money from a drawer and starts an independent life, yet using her house as a shelter, a place to rest and steal food when it’s too cold to sleep in the cellar or in the laundry of ‘the houses’. Her father accepts her way of life, throwing her the key before leaving for work, not complaining about the food missing from the cupboard, but careful to hide his pay packet.

An awkward adolescent wearing ill fitting charity clothes, the girl dreams of settling down with a nice German man in a house with white lace curtains. When she falls in love with Achim, who loves somebody else, the girl puts up with the attentions of Achim’s friend to be near him.

Eventually, when all her hopes are shattered, the girl locks herself in the toilet of a train to escape her provincial hometown for the big city. But the miracle will not happen there either and she will experience even more violence.

Later in life, a journey to Moscow will grant the young woman the key to her past and reconcile her to her father now suffering from senile dementia and finally recognised as a German citizen.

Natascha Wodin writes vigorously and convincingly to provide a (rather sad) insight into contemporary German society at the blunt end.

‘A discreet item in a German daily newspaper, entitled «Homesickness never lasts for ever. Ukrainian foreign workers remember», has this to say about it: «Some of the survivors still live among us today. Under the Nazi dictatorship during the last war, over seven million foreign workers were deported to Germany from 22 European countries. Most of them were forced to work in munitions factories while others slaved in the fields or in mines. The vast majority came from the Soviet Union. They were seen everywhere in our towns and factories, branded with the word EAST sewn onto their clothes. In Essen and its environs alone some 400 camps were erected to house this cheap labour. There is not one large company still existing today, not one factory and hardly any small firm, that did not apply to the Employment Office for «its» quota of foreign workers. By the end of 1941 some five million foreign workers had been deported to Germany and more than half had died as a result of inhumane working and living conditions. Our knowledge of this dark chapter of German history still leaves much to be desired. It was forbidden to photograph foreign workers and the death penalty threatened anyone who spoke to them. The companies concerned refuse to give information or to open their archives. Foreign workers who were unable to return home after the war are often too ashamed to speak about their experiences, or prefer to forget.»

The author Reinhard Laska was lucky enough to meet Andrei and Anna Lalatsch, who once worked on a farm in the Ukraine... Cut off from their roots, they are still officially referred to as «homeless aliens». They have no passports and no legal right to claim damages for the injustice they have suffered.... I might have been reading my own family history.’ p170