The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II Contributor(s): Samuel, Wolfgang W. E. (Author) |
|||||||
ISBN: 1578064821 ISBN-13: 9781578064823 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD! Click here for our low price guarantee Binding Type: Hardcover - See All Available Formats & Editions Published: September 2002 Annotation: Written by survivors of the war, these accounts bear witness to the unimaginable horrors German children endured during World War II. 26 photos. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Military - World War Ii - History | Europe - Germany - Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs |
Dewey: B |
LCCN: 2002006172 |
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6.48" W x 9.32" L (1.65 lbs) 376 pages |
Themes: - Chronological Period - 1940's |
Features: Dust Cover, Glossary, Ikids, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents |
Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2002 pg. 1016 Booklist 09/01/2002 pg. 51 Univ PR Books for Public Libry 01/01/2003 pg. 95 - Outstanding |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: One survivor tells of the fire-bombing of Dresden. Another survivor recounts the pervasive fear of marauding Russian and Czech bandits raping and killing. Children recall fathers who were only photographs and mothers who were saviors and heroes. These are typical in the stories collected in The War of Our Childhood: Memories of World War II. For this book Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, a childhood refugee himself after the fall of Nazi Germany, interviewed twenty-seven men and women who as children--by chance and sheer resilience--survived Allied bombs, invading armies, hunger, and chaos. "Our eyes carried no hate, only recognition of what was," Samuel writes of his childhood. "Peace was an abstraction. The world we Kinder knew nearly always had the word 'war' appended to it." Samuel's heartfelt narratives from these innocent survivors are invariably riveting and often terrifying. Each engrossing story has perilous and tragic moments--school children in Leuna who are sent home during an air raid but are strafed as moving targets; fathers who exist only as distant figures, returning to their families long after the war--or not at all; mothers who are raped and tortured; families who are forced into a seemingly endless relocation that replicates the terrors of war itself. In capturing such experiences from nearly every region of Germany and involving people of every socio-economic class, this is a collection of unique memories, but each account contributes to a cumulative understanding of the war that is more personal than strategic surveys and histories. For Samuel and the survivors he interviewed, agony and fright were part of everyday life, just as were play, wondrous experience, and above all perseverance. "My focus," Samuel writes, "is on the astounding ability of a generation of German children to emerge from debilitating circumstances as sane and productive human beings." |
Contributor Bio(s): Samuel, Wolfgang W. E.: - Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force, is the author of German Boy: A Refugee's Story and I Always Wanted to Fly: America's Cold War Airmen, both published by University Press of Mississippi. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia. |
Customer ReviewsSubmit your own review |
To tell a friend about this book, you must Sign In First! |