Witnesses of War - Children's Lives Under the Nazis

Zusatztext “Impressive. . . . In comprehensively studying a population defined not by race! religion or nationality but by age! Stargardt has added considerably and imaginatively to the scholarship of the Holocaust and war." — The Baltimore Sun “Magnificent. . . . Stargardt is brilliant. . . . His great achievement is to touch us with the experiences of all these children." — The Guardian (London) “Stargardt tells this uncomfortable tale at its bitterest moment! from the point of view of the children who perished under Nazism or lived through it." — The Washington Post Book World “Illuminating. . . . Witnesses of War belongs on the bookshelf on anyone who purports to know the history of the 20th century. . . . An important contribution to the study of the war’s psychological impact on children." — Houston Chronicle Informationen zum Autor Nick Stargardt Klappentext A groundbreaking study of what happened to children-of all nationalities and religions-living under the Nazi regime. Drawing on a wide range of new sources, Witnesses of War reveals the stories of life under the Third Reich as never before. As the Nazis overran Europe, children were saved or damned according to their race. Turning to an untouched wealth of original material-school assignments; juvenile diaries; letters; and even accounts of children's games-Nicholas Stargardt breaks stereotypes of victimhood and trauma to give us the gripping individual stories of the generation Hitler made. Leseprobe Chapter 1 The Home Front Germans at war Janina came out of the privy at the bottom of her grandparents’ garden on the morning of 1 September 1939 to see two planes circling overhead. The sound of their machine guns opening up brought her parents, grandparents and brothers running out of the house to join her. Then they all rushed back inside again to listen to the radio. They just caught the announcement of the German attack on Poland, which had begun at daybreak, then the voice faded away as the batteries died. “Grandpa turned the switch off and looked at our anguished faces,” ten-year-old Janina noted in her diary at the end of that long day. “He knelt in front of the picture of Jesus Christ and started to pray aloud.” They joined him in the Lord’s Prayer. Janina had been expecting to return with her parents from the little village of Borowa-Góra, where they had spent the summer holidays with her grandparents, to Warsaw for the start of school on 4 September, and had been happily anticipating the set of new school books they had promised to buy her. The ten-year-old knew that something momentous had just occurred, but had no images yet of war. Even those adults who had lived through the First World War in Poland could have no conception of what the second would be like. That September the start of the new autumn term was seriously disrupted across Europe. In Germany, schools remained closed at the end of the summer holidays and children hung around the gates to catch a glimpse of reservists as they poured in to register at these temporary mobilisation centres. In the rural calm of the Eifel, west of the Rhine, two little girls enjoyed the envy of all their friends for being allowed to stand in the village square with a bag of apples and throw them to the passing troops. Unfortunately, for many older children, like sixteen-year-old Gretel Bechtold, the excitement soon died down: the French fired no shots at the West Wall and soon she had to go back to school. As street lights were turned off and windows blacked out, Germany’s towns and cities were plunged into a night-time darkness they had not experienced at night since the pre-industrial era. In Essen, little girls started pretending to be the nightwatchman who patrolled the streets reminding people to conceal their lights by calling out “Blackout! Blackout!” A...

Product details

• Authors: Nicholas Stargardt
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.01.2007
• EAN: 9781400033799
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3379-9
• No. of pages: 528
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 201 mm x 30 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous