In less-conflicted times they might never have met, but as Germany lurched toward World War II many lives were forced to change direction. Dieter is the orphaned son of a music professor and one of that teacher's pupils. His father had been killed in World War I and his mother died in the influenza pandemic of 1917, leaving the young man as a ward of the music school where he had been born. There he played the piano for gratuities and earned the favor of older boys in the school dormitory by sharing their bunk space, until an edict closing the Jewish-managed school evicted him into pre-war...