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    Letters to a Prisoner of War
    Letters to a Prisoner of War
    Letters to a Prisoner of War
    Ebook73 pages45 minutes

    Letters to a Prisoner of War

    By Gerda Nischan

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    About this ebook

    Some of the letters published in this volume were first published by the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German (SCALG) and were very well received in the US. In 2010 they were published in book form in Germany for the first time. Those letters show what happened during World War II not only to the soldiers fighting on the front, but also to those waiting at home, the families. And, once, the war was over, the struggle for survival continued, in the prisoner camps, and at home for the starving families, who wait for the prisoners to come home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFrankfurter Literaturverlag
    Release dateAug 30, 2014
    ISBN9783837215786
    Letters to a Prisoner of War

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      Book preview

      Letters to a Prisoner of War - Gerda Nischan

      Index

      Preface

      My parents were ordinary people who led ordinary lives. They met on a train somewhere in the Palatinate, my mother on her way home to her family and my father on his way to America. He had lost both his parents by the age of eleven; first, his mother, who died in childbirth, and, a year later, his father, dying of grief.

      My mother, born in the Palatinate in 1910, had two siblings and had enjoyed a happy early childhood. That changed rapidly when her father was killed in World War I, and her mother married his brother, a widower with three children, a year later. Three more children were born to the parents and before long there were nine children to take care of, which changed life in that household rapidly. My mother often had tears in her eyes when she talked about that time. Where there had been love and kindness before there was now open hatred and competition between the children, and my mother never warmed up to the new man she was supposed to call father and never addressed him as such. As a result he was often extremely strict and cruel towards her. Her dream of becoming a teacher had to be buried.

      Life was hard after the end of the war. What once had been a quiet, loving family life turned into a fight for survival.

      My father, born in 1905, also in the Palatinate, had been mistreated by the relatives who reared him after both his parents had died. This experience helped to convince him to go to America to find a better life. He was a baker by profession, specializing in all sorts of bread baking and the fine art of cakes and pastries, and his dream was to own his own bakery and coffee-house, one day. A distant relative had gone to America before him, and with his help my father sailed, at age 23, to America. The year was 1928.

      The girl that he had met on the train was on his mind all the time while working in Rochester as a baker. He had asked her if he would be allowed to send her a postcard from America and so he did.

      He wrote more than one postcard, soon they exchanged letters. They fell in love. After two years of letters across the ocean, my father asked her to marry him; they should live in America, he felt, since life in Germany at that time was so uncertain. The only surviving letter from my father during that period is dated September 24, 1930. My mother had burned all their correspondence when Hitler declared war on America. That this letter somehow survived is miraculous. My father explains in this letter why they should live in America; the chaotic political situation in Germany would make a happy future in that country not feasible for them; maybe later when times would improve they could return to the homeland.

      My father sailed to Germany only with the plan to meet her family, get married, and return to America with his bride within six months. He had the tickets for their return together as man and wife in his pocket.

      But my father never returned to America. Her family was against the marriage and her consequent leaving with him to a foreign country. It took several years to convince them that he was worthy of her. My parents finally got married in 1934. They settled in the Palatinate and started a family.

      In 1940 I was born. I am the fourth child. World War II broke out. When Hitler declared war on America my father said casually in front of his colleagues: What, this gangster declares war on America? That is just crazy!

      He should have been more careful about

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