The Ark

Two rooms all to themselves, it was almost too good to be true! For this was postwar Germany, filled with starving, homeless people trying to stay alive amidst the rubble, and to the Lechows the two freezing attic rooms in Mrs. Verduz' house on Parsley Street were an unbelievable stroke of luck.

No matter that every stick of furniture and even the cracked dishes were borrowed from a grudging but kind landlady, that food was so scarce they were nearly always hungry, that Matthias, loving th...