Leo T. reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews
I read quite a bit of the book on the bus/subway, taking it out to the old soldiers' home. If no one takes it up after eight weeks, I will pull it from that shelf and fulfill one of the two wishes posted by PBS comrades.
The (foolish and risky) visit the author made to Lodz, hoping to glimpse his family, included many trips via the sealed trolley car. He also visited his boyhood neighborhood, this at the time he was 17 or so, pretending to be an Aryan, and was a (dis)loyal member of the Hitler Youth.
Especially interesting is the high morale of the German populace, still sure they would prevail even in the latter part of 1944. The author did serve in the Volkstrum at the end of the war, luckily in the West, not on the Eastern Front. His comments on the immediate post war dislocations are graphic in that we remember the DPs, but never knew the details.
After the war, he encountered the Lodz trolley car driver who remembered (and feared) his many trips during that long ago week.
The (foolish and risky) visit the author made to Lodz, hoping to glimpse his family, included many trips via the sealed trolley car. He also visited his boyhood neighborhood, this at the time he was 17 or so, pretending to be an Aryan, and was a (dis)loyal member of the Hitler Youth.
Especially interesting is the high morale of the German populace, still sure they would prevail even in the latter part of 1944. The author did serve in the Volkstrum at the end of the war, luckily in the West, not on the Eastern Front. His comments on the immediate post war dislocations are graphic in that we remember the DPs, but never knew the details.
After the war, he encountered the Lodz trolley car driver who remembered (and feared) his many trips during that long ago week.
