The Railway Man

The Railway Man PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: Charnwood
ISBN: 9781444819854
Category : Large type books
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
During the Second World War, Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway, and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio. Left emotionally scarred, and unable to form relationships, Lomax suffered for years - until, with the help of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came to terms with what had happened. Almost 50 years after the war his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive; their reconciliation is the culmination of this extraordinary story.

The Railway Man

The Railway Man PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: Charnwood
ISBN: 9781444819854
Category : Large type books
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
During the Second World War, Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway, and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio. Left emotionally scarred, and unable to form relationships, Lomax suffered for years - until, with the help of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came to terms with what had happened. Almost 50 years after the war his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive; their reconciliation is the culmination of this extraordinary story.

The Railway Man

The Railway Man PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 9780345406682
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Tells of a British soldier's ordeal as a prisoner of war and how he was able fifty years later to meet his torturer and offer forgiveness.

The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions)

The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions) PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393344073
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize The Railway Man is a remarkable memoir of forgiveness—a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. Eric Lomax, sent to Malaya in World War II, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and put to punishing work on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. After the radio he illicitly helped to build in order to follow war news was discovered, he was subjected to two years of starvation and torture. He would never forget the interpreter at these brutal sessions. Fifty years after returning home from the war, marrying, and gaining the strength from his wife Patti to fight his demons, he learned the interpreter was alive. Through letters and meeting with his former torturer, Lomax bravely moved beyond bitterness drawing on an extraordinary will to extend forgiveness. Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness

Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Here is a remarkable true story of forgiveness--a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. A classic war autobiography, The Railway Man is a powerful tale of survival and of the human capacity to understand even those who have done us unthinkable harm. From The Railway Man: The passion for trains and railroads is, I have been told, incurable. I have also learned that there is no cure for torture. These two afflictions have been intimately linked in the course of my life, and yet through some chance combination of luck and grace I have survived them both. I was born in Edinburgh, in the lowlands of Scotland, in 1919. My father was an official in the General Post Office there, a career which he had started as a boy of 16 and which he intended me to imitate to the letter. He was fascinated by telephony and telegraphy, and I grew up in a world in which tinkering and inventing and making were honoured past-times. I vividly remember the first time that my father placed a giant set of headphones around my ears and I heard, through the hiss and buzz of far-off-energies, a disembodied human voice. In the worst times, much later, when I thought I was about to die in pain and shock at the hands of men who could not imagine anything of my life, who had no respect for who I was or my history, I might have wished that my father had had a different passion. But in the 1920s, technology was still powerful and beautiful without being menacing. Who would have thought that a radio, for example, could cause terrible harm? It seemed to be a wonderful instrument by which people could speak to each other; and yet I heard Hitler ranting over airwaves, and saw two men beaten to death for their part in making such an instrument, and suffered for my own part in it for a half a century.

The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions)

The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions) PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393350665
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize The Railway Man is a remarkable memoir of forgiveness—a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. Eric Lomax, sent to Malaya in World War II, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and put to punishing work on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. After the radio he illicitly helped to build in order to follow war news was discovered, he was subjected to two years of starvation and torture. He would never forget the interpreter at these brutal sessions. Fifty years after returning home from the war, marrying, and gaining the strength from his wife Patti to fight his demons, he learned the interpreter was alive. Through letters and meeting with his former torturer, Lomax bravely moved beyond bitterness drawing on an extraordinary will to extend forgiveness. Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

Unbroken

Unbroken PDF Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812974492
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible true story of survival and salvation that is the basis for two major motion pictures: Unbroken and Unbroken: Path to Redemption. “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Long Way Back to the River Kwai

Long Way Back to the River Kwai PDF Author: Loet Velmans
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 161145185X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"He survived brutality, sickness, and war, but he refused to give up hope. Loet Velmans was seventeen when Germany invaded his native Holland in 1940. He and his family escaped to London just before the Dutch army surrendered and German U-boats began their deadly patrol of the North Sea. Deciding they would be safer in the Far East, the Velmans family sailed to the Dutch East Indies--now Indonesia--where Loet joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded, conquered the colony in a week without firing a shot, and imprisoned all Dutch soldiers. For three and a half years, Loet toiled in slave-labor camps building the railway made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai, which would supply the Japanese invasion of India. Some 200,000 POW's and laborers died building this Railway of Death. Loet suffered malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable abuse, but never gave up hope. Almost sixty years later he returned to the place where he nearly died and where he buried his best friend in a burlap sack. From that emotional visit comes this stunning memoir" -- Back cover.

The Railway Man

The Railway Man PDF Author: Eric Lomax
Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 9780099597551
Category : Burma-Siam Railroad
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the story of innocence betrayed, of passion and curiosity about the world of machines turned nightmarish and punished by the cruelty of which only humans are capable. It is also a story of survival and courage. Eric Lomax was tortured by the Japanese on the Burma-Siam Railway. Fifty years later he met one of his tormentors.

KL

KL PDF Author: Nikolaus Wachsmann
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429943726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
The “deeply researched, groundbreaking” first comprehensive history of the Nazi concentration camps (Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker). In a landmark work of history, Nikolaus Wachsmann offers an unprecedented, integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933 through their demise, seventy years ago, in the spring of 1945. The Third Reich has been studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history, and yet until now there has been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the everyday experiences of its inhabitants, both perpetrators and victims, and all those living in what Primo Levi called “the gray zone.” In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Closely examining life and death inside the camps, and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp system was shaped by changing political, legal, social, economic, and military forces, Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance, KL is destined to be a classic in the history of the twentieth century. Praise for KL A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2015 A Kirkus Reviews Best History Book of 2015 Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category “[A] monumental study . . . a work of prodigious scholarship . . . with agonizing human texture and extraordinary detail . . . Wachsmann makes the unimaginable palpable. That is his great achievement.” —Roger Cohen, The New York Times Book Review “Wachsmann’s meticulously detailed history is essential for many reasons, not the least of which is his careful documentation of Nazi Germany’s descent from greater to even greater madness. To the persistent question, “How did it happen?,” Wachsmann supplies voluminous answers.” —Earl Pike, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

The Blitz Companion

The Blitz Companion PDF Author: Mark Clapson
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
ISBN: 1911534491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The Blitz Companion offers a unique overview of a century of aerial warfare, its impact on cities and the people who lived in them. It tells the story of aerial warfare from the earliest bombing raids and in World War 1 through to the London Blitz and Allied bombings of Europe and Japan. These are compared with more recent American air campaigns over Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the NATO bombings during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and subsequent bombings in the aftermath of 9/11. Beginning with the premonitions and predictions of air warfare and its terrible consequences, the book focuses on air raids precautions, evacuation and preparations for total war, and resilience, both of citizens and of cities. The legacies of air raids, from reconstruction to commemoration, are also discussed. While a key theme of the book is the futility of many air campaigns, care is taken to situate them in their historical context. The Blitz Companion also includes a guide to documentary and visual resources for students and general readers. Uniquely accessible, comparative and broad in scope this book draws key conclusions about civilian experience in the twentieth century and what these might mean for military engagement and civil reconstruction processes once conflicts have been resolved.