To Steal a Moment’s Time: A Memoir

By Katharina Berger with G.J. Berger (Acorn Publishing, 2023)

Pages (print): 216

Genre: Nonfiction – Memoir/World War II

Via: Author Request

Note: We received a complimentary copy of this book for honest review.

“The sun warms. Enveloped in pine trees we are again in the forest, the beautiful Thüringer Wald. Baby is lying in his carriage, and I am lying on soft thick moss sunning myself. The sky is dark blue, high and glorious. One must have visited hell to be able to see heaven as it really is.” – Katharina Berger

Some books you read. Others you experience. To Steal a Moment’s Time is the latter.

The Basics:

On the brink of World War II, Katharina Berger was the most sought-after stage and film actress in Germany. As many of her colleagues fled Hitler’s madness and the devastation of war, Katharina stayed and gave birth to a healthy baby boy in 1944. From evading Nazi fanatics and helping Jews escape, to scrounging for food and shelter as she searched for her missing husband, she journaled during her son’s first year of life, surviving on the small thread of hope that she and her child might live to see a better world.

Kimber: Mom and I have read, like a zillion books about World War II. Enough to sink a battleship. Fiction. Non-fiction. Historical fiction. All points in between. To Steal a Moment’s Time stands alone. Here’s why (the short version):

Courage and Hope

This is a story about courage and hope. To Steal a Moment’s Time is the true story of a mother trying to protect and care for her infant son during the final days of World War II. As her country collapses around her, Katharina Berger steals a few moments between 1944 and November 1945 to record what she sees, hears, experiences, and feels. The story is told in four parts. Part I is A Newborn in a Time of War. Part II is Running in Hell. Part III is Combat Too Close. Part IV is The Trek.

Packed with power and pathos, this compilation of diary entries penned by a new mother is a quiet rebellion against forgetting, a tapestry of valor and light stitched by sacrifice and forged in steel. In these pages Katharina reflects on how a war she never agreed with has ravaged most everything she holds dear as she fights for the life of her only son, Georg, while desperately searching for her solider husband.

The Telling

To Steal a Moment’s Time is a haunting, lyrical testament to maternal love operating in the shadow of total collapse. Told by the co-author’s mother, this memoir chronicles the stark contrast between fragile new life and the volent death throes of the Third Reich. From damp, overcrowded air raid shelters to constant hunger to desperate evacuations, every page charts a cartography of endurance calibrated in ounces of milk, drops of Vigantol, a squeaky baby carriage, boiling diapers, and grating carrots. It includes layers of exhaustion. Cold. Hunger. Fear. Darkness. Confusion. Chaos. Russians marching on Berlin. Death, deprivation, and desolation. The kindness and generosity of American soldiers.

Translated from the original German, the writing is starkly luminous. It tears a beautiful wound in the fabric of time, capturing love and loss like starlight among ruins.

Truth: We could not sit down to draft a review of this book for several days after finishing it. It kept rolling around in our heads. Echoing. Reverberating. Sneaking up on us in the middle of the night and knocking on our hearts.

Remarkable

Thus, we won’t be rating this book. It doesn’t feel right. But we will say that To Steal a Moment’s Time is one of the most remarkable memoirs we’ve ever read, battleships notwithstanding.

Kimber: I’d grab a copy now ‘fize you, Buster.