The laughing woman in the picture is my grandmother. She was born 1923 on a farm in East Prussia as one of eight children, so she was 16 when the Second World War started. She lost one brother who was shot down as a fighter pilot on his first flight, and two more were executed for opposing Hitler. In 1945, she was kidnapped by Mongols in the vanguard of the Red Army and spent the next five years in a labour camp in Russia. She then returned to West Germany and met my grandfather. I’m quite sure that I’ll dedicate a lot of my time this year to research her story and try to write about it.