Strawberries with the Fuhrer: A Journey from the Third Reich to New Zealand

The Fuhrer did not laugh at me. He sat down beside me and we ate strawberries and vanilla ice cream together and I did not spill anything on my blue dress and if he had asked me to die for him there and then I would have done so, unquestioningly. Helga Tiscenko was born in Germany in 1929, the elder daughter of a warm, close-knit, middle class family. But this was no ordinary family: her parents were committed members of the National Socialist Party and during the Second World War her father rose to the rank of general in the Waffen SS. Hers is an extraordinary story, written with simplicity, humor and grace. In loving detail, she paints a vivid picture of her childhood in pre-war Germany and then tells of her experiences during the war and the final days of the Third Reich - from a perspective that has not often been explored. After the war - as a sixteen-year-old branded as a 'Nazi brat' - she had to come to terms with its aftermath. Her account of emigrating to New Zealand, where she and her Russian husband were sent to live in the alien environment of a raw hydro-electric township in the South Island (having been advised that new immigrants should be prepared to do 'pioneering work'), is another extraordinary chapter in the life of this most singular woman. Now, she and her husband Nick, quite simply, describe their present life as 'being in paradise'.