https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/novel-ambition-20131118-2xpu0.html

Markus Zusak’s mother, Elisabeth Zusak ( Nicknamed Liesel)

But she vividly remembers that time the bombs fell across the road and the little girl and her grandmother died. She remembers when the cuckoo would sound on the radio, the cue for everyone to get out of bed and go to the air shelter – “either die or run” – her foster sister carrying her hairbrush and hair curlers. She remembers when the boy next door ran out of the house to take bread to a parade of Jewish prisoners and was whipped for his compassion. “That was the most tragic thing, you know, it was the most terrible thing anybody could witness.”

Around the kitchen table his mum would tell the kids about her “rough as guts” foster mother, and the bombs coming down “and the ground being covered in ice but the sky being on fire.

Rough as guts foster mother would become Rosa Hubermann.