Samuel Wolfgang W.E. The war of our childhood: memories of World War II

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. — XV, 356 p. — ISBN: 1-57806-482-1I want to emphasize for the reader that «The War of Our Childhood» is not a book about politics or ideology. Nor is it a book about right or wrong, about war or blame. Rather, it is a connected narrative about the consequences of war visited upon children. Although many of the stories reflect the agony and the terror of the times, that is not my intended focus; it represents only the framework within which we children lived, played, and, if fortunate, survived. My focus is entirely on the young children, on their resilience under trying circumstances, on the critical role of mothers in their lives, and on the astounding ability of a generation of German children to emerge from debilitating circumstances as sane and productive human beings.I present the stories in the principal manner in which war manifested itself to each child. War came to us children gradually, first from the sky. Initially war from the sky was no more than an annoyance; later it became a terrorizing experience. War on the ground, in both east and west Germany, came later in 1944. The final part of the book looks at children expelled from the Sudetenland, at the role of a bipolar Germany in their lives, and at the continuing absence of fathers years after war’s end. Each chapter begins with the name and age in 1945 of the individual child, along with the place of his or her permanent residence in Germany at the time the story begins.