Even as I'm just starting this book it grips me rightaway. I was raised just after WW2, in Holland, as it was still smarting from the occupation, in a city (Rotterdam) where I could still see the charred buildings from when the center city was bombed away by aerial bombardment in the Blitzkrieg, ...
The Poles wasted no time, occupying Teschen and Freistadt the following day. In Germany’s new Gaue the Jews were now at great risk. There were 27,000 Jews and non-Aryan Christians in the Sudetenland. In the summer there had been antisemitic riots in Eger, Asch, and Karlsbad, and Jewish shops had ...
The day, the hour when every bell in Vienna proclaimed peace and the end of the Second World War. I was lying on an upturned fridge, unwashed and unshaven, covered in filth in my ‘partisan uniform’ in a coal cellar in the Plösslgasse in the 4th Bezirk. The door to the cellar was guarded by a Red ...