The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front PDF Author: Sonya Winterberg
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399014617
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
If this doesn’t move you, I suggest you check your pulse.' –John Kay, frontman of Steppenwolf (born in East Prussia in 1944) Told by the children who survived, these stories could well be the last eyewitness report of the aftermath of the Second World War. As the land where they once lived was integrated into the Eastern Bloc, their accounts remained hushed until after the Iron Curtain fell. Now, in The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, they break their silence. During the bitter winter months of 1944-45, hundreds of thousands of Germans fled East Prussia from an advancing Red Army. With sometimes only minutes’ notice, families escaped in horse-drawn carriages, or they simply ran on foot. In desperation, mothers threw babies onto handcarts, pushing ahead through snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Exhausted, horses broke down, left to die in roadside ditches. Pounding artillery filled the air. In the ensuing chaos, 20,000 children lost their families – to the mayhem, to starvation, epidemics or gunfire. Even the youngest suddenly found themselves alone in the world, needing to forage for food and find shelter. They hid in bullet-riddled barns and wandered from house to house, begging for help. While many died, there are the few that managed to survive. Their experiences are unimaginable: toes frozen off, endless hunger, rape, physical abuse. Those considered lucky were eventually taken in, even lovingly cared for, primarily by Lithuanian farmers, but nearly to the last of them, they grew into adulthood illiterate and poverty-stricken. Yet a surprising truth lives within nearly every one of these victims – an overwhelming sense of hope and forgiveness. They are the Wolf Children.

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front PDF Author: Sonya Winterberg
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399014617
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
If this doesn’t move you, I suggest you check your pulse.' –John Kay, frontman of Steppenwolf (born in East Prussia in 1944) Told by the children who survived, these stories could well be the last eyewitness report of the aftermath of the Second World War. As the land where they once lived was integrated into the Eastern Bloc, their accounts remained hushed until after the Iron Curtain fell. Now, in The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, they break their silence. During the bitter winter months of 1944-45, hundreds of thousands of Germans fled East Prussia from an advancing Red Army. With sometimes only minutes’ notice, families escaped in horse-drawn carriages, or they simply ran on foot. In desperation, mothers threw babies onto handcarts, pushing ahead through snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Exhausted, horses broke down, left to die in roadside ditches. Pounding artillery filled the air. In the ensuing chaos, 20,000 children lost their families – to the mayhem, to starvation, epidemics or gunfire. Even the youngest suddenly found themselves alone in the world, needing to forage for food and find shelter. They hid in bullet-riddled barns and wandered from house to house, begging for help. While many died, there are the few that managed to survive. Their experiences are unimaginable: toes frozen off, endless hunger, rape, physical abuse. Those considered lucky were eventually taken in, even lovingly cared for, primarily by Lithuanian farmers, but nearly to the last of them, they grew into adulthood illiterate and poverty-stricken. Yet a surprising truth lives within nearly every one of these victims – an overwhelming sense of hope and forgiveness. They are the Wolf Children.

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front PDF Author: Sonya Winterberg
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1399014633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
'If this doesn’t move you, I suggest you check your pulse.' –John Kay, frontman of Steppenwolf (born in East Prussia in 1944) Told by the children who survived, these stories could well be the last eyewitness report of the aftermath of the Second World War. As the land where they once lived was integrated into the Eastern Bloc, their accounts remained hushed until after the Iron Curtain fell. Now, in The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front, they break their silence. During the bitter winter months of 1944-45, hundreds of thousands of Germans fled East Prussia from an advancing Red Army. With sometimes only minutes’ notice, families escaped in horse-drawn carriages, or they simply ran on foot. In desperation, mothers threw babies onto handcarts, pushing ahead through snowstorms and freezing temperatures. Exhausted, horses broke down, left to die in roadside ditches. Pounding artillery filled the air. In the ensuing chaos, 20,000 children lost their families – to the mayhem, to starvation, epidemics or gunfire. Even the youngest suddenly found themselves alone in the world, needing to forage for food and find shelter. They hid in bullet-riddled barns and wandered from house to house, begging for help. While many died, there are the few that managed to survive. Their experiences are unimaginable: toes frozen off, endless hunger, rape, physical abuse. Those considered lucky were eventually taken in, even lovingly cared for, primarily by Lithuanian farmers, but nearly to the last of them, they grew into adulthood illiterate and poverty-stricken. Yet a surprising truth lives within nearly every one of these victims – an overwhelming sense of hope and forgiveness. They are the Wolf Children.

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front

The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front PDF Author: SONYA. LIEFF WINTERBERG (KERSTIN.)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781399014601
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Letters From Berlin

Letters From Berlin PDF Author: Kerstin Lieff
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762789743
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia… This powerful account draws back the curtain on a piece of history that has been largely overlooked—the nightmare that millions of German civilians suffered, simply because they were German. That Margarete survived to tell her tale so vividly and courageously is a gift to us all.

The Wolf Children

The Wolf Children PDF Author: Cay Rademacher
Publisher: Arcadia Books
ISBN: 1911350528
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Book Two of the Inspector Frank Stave Investigations, a German detective trilogy set in post-WWII Hamburg. More than 150,000 copies sold. Hamburg, 1948 It is a year of extremes. After a bitterly cold winter of starvation, the bombed city groans under excruciating heat. And Chief Inspector Frank Stave is confronted with a new case. In the ruins of a shipyard, the corpse of a boy is found and Stave's hunt for the killer leads him into the world of "wolf children" - orphaned children who have fled from the Occupied Eastern Territories and are now united in gangs. When two more bodies are discovered Stave is under even increasing pressure as he struggles to keep his personal life together too . . . Praise for the Frank Stave Investigations 'Undoubtedly the most powerful work of crime fiction I have read this year' Independent 'Vivid and harrowing' Sunday Times 'Police procedural, romance, thriller The Murderer in Ruins has a bit of everything and it's one hell of a read.' Bücher Reader reviews for The Wolf Children 'This is writing at its best. A well crafted murder hunt set in haunting landscape of post war Hamburg. Cay Rademacher has again written a book that will stay in my memory for a long time' ***** 'Another atmospheric, well-researched novel from Rademacher. He has a remarkable ability to bring characters to life in the space of a paragraph' ***** 'A bit of a goldilocks book. Not too heavy, not too light, not too long, not too short. Just about right' ***** Translated from the German by Peter Millar

Shadowland

Shadowland PDF Author: Sarah Colvin
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789146283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
A history of modern Germany told not through the lives of its leaders, but its lawbreakers. As Nelson Mandela said, “a nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” Shadowland tells the sometimes inspiring, often painful stories of Germany’s prisoners, and thereby shines new light on Germany itself. The story begins at the end of the Second World War, in a defeated country on the edge of collapse, in which orphaned and lost children are forced into homelessness, scavenging and stealing to stay alive, often laying the foundations of a so-called criminal career. While East Germany developed detention facilities for its secret police, West Germany passed prison reform laws, which erected, in the words of a prisoner, “little asbestos walls in Hell.” Shadowland is Germany as seen through the lives, experiences, triumphs, and tragedies of its lowest citizens.

Nightmares of an East Prussian Childhood

Nightmares of an East Prussian Childhood PDF Author: Ilse Stritzke
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786473541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
The mother of 11 year old Ilse Glaus turned down the last plane out of East Prussia ahead of the advancing Russians in order to stay back with her aged parents. That decision cost her family dearly in wartorn Europe, 1945. Ilse grew up on a small farm, with a wonderful family, the woods as a playground and the beaches of the Baltic. Then turmoil followed the German defeat by the Russians and the subsequent occupation. In 31 months under the Russians, Ilse's family is driven from their home, she mourns her missing father, witnesses her mother's rape, sees her grandparents and baby brother succumb to the brutal conditions, and hears of her oldest sister's capture and death in a work prison. Fighting starvation, Ilse crafts ways to coexist with the Russians, scavenging, begging and stealing to help the family survive.

In the Shadow of Wolves

In the Shadow of Wolves PDF Author: Alvydas Šlepikas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786074699
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
A Times Book of the Year, 2019 THE SECOND WORLD WAR IS OVER. BUT THE WORLD IS FAR FROM SAFE. As victorious Russian troops sweep across East Prussia, a group of desperate children face a new battle. Confronted by critical food shortages and the onset of a bitterly cold winter, these 'wolf children' secretly cross the border into Lithuania in search of work or food to take back to their starving families. In a world still reeling from the devastation of war, the children must risk everything to survive. In the Shadow of Wolves is a story of resilience, devastation and, ultimately, hope. Based on meticulous research, Alvydas Šlepikas's stunningly powerful debut novel has won over readers and critics across the world.

Ruined by the Reich

Ruined by the Reich PDF Author: Christel Weiss Brandenburg
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476606862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Decades have passed since World War II, yet the myth that all Germans were Nazi sympathizers still persists. This book follows the story of the Weiss family in East Prussia from World War I to the end of World War II. It is told from the point of view not of the victors but of the vanquished. Beginning with the good citizenship trap Hitler set for law-abiding German families, the book describes how Germany first prospered and then fell to ruin with the Third Reich. The people traded their freedoms for a national security, which quickly turned to tyranny with swift consequences for "disobedience." Like Christel's brothers (soldiers and members of Hitler's Youth), propaganda-fed children all over the Reich believed the highly idealized depiction of their roles and of their nation's victims. This fascinating and richly detailed memoir is told through the intimate narration of a woman who grew up in the midst of turmoil, experienced poverty and prejudice, witnessed the deaths of many loved ones, and was driven from her home by the Soviet Army. The combination of domestic details and vivid historical descriptions creates an unusual book as absorbing as it is educational.

Hitler’s Wolfsschanze

Hitler’s Wolfsschanze PDF Author: John Grehan
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 152675312X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
This detailed guide to Hitler’s secret Prussian headquarters is fully illustrated with historic photos and rare color images of how it appears today. Set deep in the Masurian woods of northern Poland, formally East Prussia, lies a vast complex of ruined bunkers known as the Wolfsschanze or Wolf’s Lair. This was Hitler’s headquarters for the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. It is also where Colonel von Stauffenberg almost killed Hitler in the summer of 1944. Built in under total secrecy, the Wolfsschanze was camouflaged with artificial grass and trees. Drawing on a unique collection of color photographs, Hitler’s Wolfsschanze presents a detailed tour of the 2.5 square mile campus as it appears today—with each building and its purpose identified. Laced with personal accounts of the installation and Hitler’s routines, the Wolfsschanze is brought to life once more. Yet the Wolfsschanze was not the only German military complex in this small part of the Eastern Front. This comprehensive volume also shows and describes the German Army’s headquarters at Mauerwald, the Luftwaffe’s headquarters near the current Russian border, and those of the SS and the Reich Chancellery, both situated near the Wolfsschanze.