The document reads like a poetic short-story. During a walk along the river in the Berlin of 1945, the writer first saw Mr Bender and his wife on board of their barge and noticed a little dog playing at their feet. Something about the sudden outcry of the woman and the tender care of the old man aroused her interest, and after they had met several times along the river, they got into a conversation in the course of which Mr Bender told his sad story. He was the son of a small Jewish trademan and became a musician. He married Franziska, the Christian daughter of a bargee. They had a son, Philipp, who married a Jewess. With their granddaughter, their happiness was complete. When the child was 12 years old, they gave her a little dog. That was the time of the first anti-Jewish hostilities. When the situation worsened, and Jews were eliminated from the economy, the daughter-in-law became shy and misanthropic, and the child grew very attached to her grandmother. The old woman, therefore, never recovered from the shock to find the girl and her Jewish mother taken away, when they returned home one day in 1943. In spite of innumerable petitions, they never heard from them again. From that day on, the old woman is haunted, and when she cannot find rest at nights and walks about, “the little dog barks”.