Bombs, firestorms, wreckage, death. The acrid taste of chemical fires. A sky made unceasingly black. These came to define the first four years of Siegfried Widera’s life. Later, when asked to recall his childhood, Siegfried told a psychologist that the ruins served as his playground. “The basements made great caves,” he wrote in a self-evaluation, “and the walls, standing, made towering mountains to climb.”