Friday, July 25, 2008

A good book and out of photos

Several weeks ago, I uploaded a new book by one of my favorite authors, Chris Bohjalean to my MP3 player. You can see it over there on my shelf. After starting it 3 times, I gave up listening and went to the library to get the real thing. Chris starts his story in the winter of 1945, then goes back to the winter of 1944, and then back to 1945 and not being able to go back and review, kept me confused. I read it last night and it was very well written and made me feel very grateful for my country and the time in history when I was born, as well as appreciate the horrible suffering in Europe during the war.
In January 1945, in the waning months of World War II, a family and a Scottish prisoner of war, who was brought from the stalag to her family’s farm as forced labor, walk away from their aristocratic lifestyle on a sugar beet farm in Prussia to reach the British and American lines in Germany and escape the merciless Russian army who are very angry at the Germans for the atrocities committed to their country and are bent on getting revenge. Along the way they meet a German soldier, who the pair know as Manfred–who is, in reality, Uri Singer, a Jew from Germany who managed to escape a train bound for Auschwitz. As they work their way west, they encounter a countryside ravaged by war and meet a young lady who is a French POW. I really didn't even know where Prussia was on the map...I thought it was part of Germany, but it was between Poland and Russia. It was once part of Germany, but in WWI, it became part of Poland, and the Germans wanted it back.

It finally happened. I ran out of pictures to scrapbook. I made some cards this week. I went through my scrap paper and made some "card kits" to use in the future and I ordered 10 copies of these photos to put in each of my grandchildren's books. Here is the first set:


1 comment:

Wendy said...

Oh, see, I hadn't read that. Thanks for blogging. I think WW2 history is really interesting, too.