Anni [English translation]

She loved the farmyard, played between the manure and the hay

She helped out - even as a child - family was her pay.

She was the seventh, youngest child, and as the youngest often do,

she romped around the fields and loved all who responded.

Everything untroubled

until the report on the radio

It was war, a long way away

Not yet near them in the Sudetenland.

The time went by, she was 16 when consumption took her mother.

As the Russians slowly came nearer her childhood and the war was over,

Kicked out of her homeland into a railway carriage.

And there she stands on the platform

Her life packed into two suitcases

Arrival Germany, 45,

New home urgently sought

She's radiant in the candle-light, so many candles won't fit

on her birthday cake. She says thank-you without words

And the long grown-up children and the grandkids and great-grandkids

They know parts of the story but they know this picture well

The picture of the young woman

And there she stands on the platform

Her life packed into two suitcases

Arrival Germany, 45,

New home urgently sought

She found a homeland at the end of a long, stony road

Arrival Germany, 45, now she is 90

Long may she live.

She speaks only seldom about her experiences, hunger, fear, losing and being lost

Of her husband, who is no longer with her, and how she loved to dance with him

But she never learned to laugh.

She's in her house; at home

She found her homeland at the end of a long, stony road

Today she is 90 - best wishes, all our love.

Long may she live

All the best - long may she live