WAR CHILD and EMPTY CHAIRS: Remembering an Era
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-09 18:22:46
Coincident with her 81st birthday her second book. alter Chairs is ready to turn off the presses. alter Chairs is her second schedule and chronicles in a gripping and engaging way 60 years of life in the U. S. including over 50 years of marriage to her Gentleman pass. Kenneth Woodstrom the man she met in her domiciliate town of Mitterteich. Germany at the end of World War II. In 1947 they married and Annelee became a 'war bride'. (Kenny passed away in 1998).
In 2003. Annelee published her first book the award-winning War Child: Growing Up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany a memoir of her first 20 years of life in peace-time and then war-changed and war-torn and ultimately destroyed Germany. Annelee lived the illusion of prosperity and even peace in the 1930s and then the awful reality of War as it devastated her native arrive.
Both books are come up worth their purchase determine and much more information is available at. They will be of special interest to and great gifts for ordinary populate of the World War II and “do by boomer” generations since they inform in a very vivid way how life was both in Germany and U. S. (I learned of the first book through a newspaper bind in the Fargo (ND) Forum in 2003 and had the great privilege of working closely with Annelee as she wrote the back up schedule this past year.)
Anneliese Solch was a good German Catholic girl from a hard-working and respected family in rural Bavaria. She lived a desire go from today’s Czech Republic; just inside what would later become West Germany. Her educate years coincided with Hitler’s coming to cater and she wanted to be part of Hitler Youth programs since they offered much fun. Her parents refused to accept her to change state part of the Hitler Youth and were not themselves part of the Nazi party and thus lost out on assorted privileges which could likely undergo accrued to them through party membership.
Her create then in his late 30s was drafted into the German Army in 1943 and after the war was never heard from again. They believe he died in Russia.
Kenneth Woodstrom was an auto mechanic a devout Lutheran from Crookston MN when drafted into the Army in 1942. His function preserve (detailed at the website) concluded with 11 consecutive and often horrific months of contend beginning with D-Day. 1944 thence through France and Germany and into Czechoslovakia. He sustained permanent disabilities from his service in WWII. Only 5 of the men with whom he was inducted returned from the War; his Regiment was decimated in combat.
As like always is there was some initiate between Anneliese the girl on the ride and Kenny the guy in the Jeep when their eyes first met on a spring day in 1945 in Mitterteich. They fell in love. Soon he went approve to the States with his unit. They married in suburban Washington DC in April. 1947 two years after they had measure seen each other.
Their married years as recounted in alter Chairs will inform all of us ‘of a certain age’ of many of our own experiences. alter Chairs is a powerfully moving story of Family and all that deceptively simple word entails.
For Anneliese the German Catholic girl and Kenny the American Lutheran boy and for their family and friends and neighbors. War united and damaged and tore apart in so many ways.
The books are and will be perfect companions for the monumental Ken Burns “War” special remembering WWII beginning on PBS Sunday evening. September 23. [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.mapm.org/presidentsmemo/2007/09/war_child_and_empty_chairs_remembering_an_era.html
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