“Here I’m going
Walkin’ with my baby in my arms…”
~ Rickie Lee Jones.
November 1943.
Days of heavy allied bombing have filled Berlin’s hospitals with the wounded, dead and dying. Elisabeth works round the clock for more than three days before finally heading home for some much needed rest late at night. On returning home, air raid sirens send her, Adele and Liesel from their apartment but their building suffers a direct hit before they can reach the relative safety of the shelter.
The next morning Gertrud sifts through the rubble and finds their dead bodies, but is shocked to find Liesel still alive with only a minor wound to her forehead. She learns of an orphanage located far from Berlin in the town of Regensberg, and boards a train with Liesel that night. Once there, she hands of Liesel to the nuns running the orphanage and returns to the city.
Back in Berlin, she finds that her apartment building is gone, along with most of the surrounding ones as well. Out of options, she walks to the banks of the river Spree behind Monbijou Palace to nearly the same spot where Anna took her life years earlier, and throws herself into the unforgiving, black water of the ancient river.
