In the closing days of World War II the city of Berlin came under a terrible siege. American and British planes by the thousands bombed the city by night while Russian artillery began pulverizing it by day. After four years of war, 78-year-old World War I veteran Konrad “Papa” Saenger had refused to be intimidated. In fact, it had taken all of Erna Saenger’s powers of persuasion to prevent her husband from going out for his customary meeting with his World War I comrades-in-arms. She gave him the job of burying her jelly preserves in the garden to hide them, but when he was done he had gone out into the streets despite the pleadings of the entire family. They had found his shrapnel-riddled body in the bushes outside the burning wreckage of Pastor Martin Niemoller’s house, only a short way from home. While shells blanketed the district, the family brought Papa home in a wheelbarrow.
As she walked alongside the cart, Erna remembered that during their last conversation she had a slight difference of opinion with Konrad as to which Biblical quotation was more appropriate for the times. Papa maintained the “one can only live by the 90th Psalm, especially the fourth verse: ‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.'” Erna had disagreed. “Personally,” she told him, “I think that psalm is much too pessimistic. I prefer the 46th: ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.'”
There was not a coffin to be found, and a trip to the cemetery was too dangerous to attempt in any case. Still, they could not keep the body in the warm house. They left it on the porch. Erna found two small pieces of wood and nailed them together for a cross. Gently, she placed the crucifix between her husband’s hands. As she looked down a Papa, she wished she could tell him that he had been right, for the 90th Psalm continued: “We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.”