To Forget Berlin

A Novel

In Berlin in 1945, a city in ruins, a man and a woman meet and fall in love. Rudi and Renate, both young, he an Austrian Jew, she a German Jew have barely survived the war. Their love affair takes place amidst the rubble, the hunger, the danger of Berlin, now occupied by the Russians who cook horsemeat over open fires in the street and steal everything in sight. Renate becomes pregnant. Rudi is not happy and tells her he cannot have a child. He tells her he is a child himself. But she wants the child- for her it means new life in the midst of destruction and loss.

In Paris in 1959 the trees are in bloom. The child, now a fourteen year old boy named Anton, has tracked down the father he has never seen and made plans to meet him in a cafe in Paris. Renate takes the train from Nice with Anton but tells him she will not see his father, still bitter about what happened
in Berlin fourteen years ago. Father and son meet in a cafe. Despite her resistance, Rudi attempts to see once again the woman he loved all those years ago. Can the past be recovered? The war is over, but not for Rudi and Renate, still haunted by what they lived through. In Paris 1959 past and present will collide and the three, mother, father, child, will be transformed.