Above is the front cover of my new book. What follows are descriptions of which the first one is short and the second is by Giles MacDonogh who read the book. His remarks are also on the back cover of the book.
Short description of Karla Poewe’s Defeat as a Childhood Experience: WWII’s Shadow Remembered, Revisited, and Researched.
Defeat as Childhood Experience as told in Part 1 is the author's account, based on memory episodes, of her childhood during the closing months of WWII and subsequent Allied occupation. In Part 2 readers walk step by step with the author and her husband Irving Hexham, a British historian, as they return to towns with relevant archives in search of documents that show the hard material realities affecting adults and children that the child was not privy to then.
Giles MacDonogh’s Reading of Karla Poewe’s Book:
'Karla Olga Poewe's Defeat as a Childhood Experience is possibly the most stirring account of a childhood lived in the closing months of the Second World War and subsequent Allied occupation to have have emerged to date. It starts with the British destruction of Königsberg before Karla flees East Prussia for Dresden, only to arrive just in time for the apocalyptic St Valentine's Day raids which began on 13 February 1945. Through a child's eyes we learn of arbitrary killing, brutality, rape and impotent humiliation; but at the same time she witnesses a certain brand of stoicism, as Germans swallow the bitter pill, not only of occupation, but the knowledge of the crimes they committed against others. Then come the beginnings of reconstruction in ruined towns and cities before she emigrates to Canada in her mid-teens. The adults are as emotionally and psychologically shattered as the buildings they inhabit. 'For Karla Poewe, the experience of remembering her childhood wasn't quite enough, however. The academic in her also wanted to know what it all signified, and it is that which makes this book so different: we follow her steps in recreating and understanding what had happened not just to her, but also to the grown-ups, during that terrible dénouement that was the defeat of Nazi Germany.'
Giles MacDonogh is author of After the Reich
Karla Poewe "Defeat as Childhood Experience: WWII's Shadows Remembered, Revisited, And Researched" is available on Amazon.com
More comments and details about the book will be offered in forthcoming blogs. By the way, this is my first post-pandemic post.
