Helwig hopes that by bringing together recollections from childhoods in Nazi Germany with portraits of a generation whose memories will soon vanish, her book can help change that. “There’s an emotional process happening, and through that emotional process hopefully it creates a curiosity to ask more questions and to have frank conversations, to be able to access that time,” she says. “It’s not about victimising this generation, it’s important to try and encourage the generations to start talking to each other.”

The book ends with a quote from Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On: “Violent conflicts create zones of silence in a society. The deeds and responsibility of the perpetrators are concealed. Thus also the suffering of the victims, the role of the spectators... The silence is often passed on to the next generation.”

Kriegskinder is published in a climate that gives a renewed urgency to these conversations. “The book wants to raise a certain awareness that, yes, it was a long time ago but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen again,” says Helwig. “When we started this project in 2014, we lived in a very different world from today. I told friends in Germany that I was doing this book about the Kriegskinder, and the response was ‘oh interesting, but do we need to talk about that still? Look at Germany today’ – it was at the height of Merkel and Obama – and suddenly, two years later, Germany and Europe and America are faced with very different scenarios.”

In her foreword, Senfft acknowledges how collective silence can infect wider groups. “Research … has shown that trauma and severe stress can be hereditary; that which is not dealt with can be passed on to the next generation.” And it leaches out beyond the family. “What is not brought to light and engaged with individually and within the family finds its way into society and politics.”

The exhibition Kriegskinder is on view at F3, Berlin from 2 February to 8 April 2018.

Below is a selection of six portraits from the book, which is out now, published by Hatje Cantz.