The narrative about the Second World War works almost as a kind of fairy tale. Not in terms of the lightness of its subject matter, even though originally folktales were also not exactly light-hearted either, but in the sense of how moral positions, the rules of ethical behaviour and taboos are conveyed through storytelling. Great-grandma’s narrative is driven by a basic human urge to tell stories – she tells hers in order to make sense of past events, her own actions in the past, and make sense of the behaviour and fates of those close to her. But also to give meaning to her great-grandson’s life. The family history, which the great-grandson is discovering for the first time, builds his own identity, transmitting with it not only family traumas but also human resistance, the will to survive, the struggle to preserve dignity and humanity. – from the afterword by Aljoša Harmanov