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War Children: A Memoir
In Berlin in 1939, Michael Tradowsky celebrated his fourth birthday with his parents by helping his father tack up blackout paper over their windows. Germany was at war. For the next six years, the Tradowsky family endured the nightmare of the German home front.
Intense and powerful, War Children shares the incredible saga of an ordinary German family during World War II. Looking back from the vantage of seventy years, Michaels memoir directly confronts how his childhood experiences, despite his parents attempt to give him a normal upbringing, were shaped by an epoch of rampant evil under Hitler.
Michael shares how each member of his family had his or her own way of fighting against the regime. His courageous and outspoken aristocratic mother was determined to protect her son from Nazi brainwashing and sacrificed everything but her love and honor to keep her children alive. His father, a promising theater director, rubbed shoulders with the great entertainers of the timeuntil his refusal to join the Nazi Party destroyed his aspirations. But perhaps Michaels love for his baby sister exemplifies the tragedy of a childhood spent in war, for her very life depended on him carrying her to the bomb shelter.
From winding roads twisting through the tall pines of the Black Forest to trucks crammed with refugees, War Children offers a sobering testimony for children victimized by war, past and present.
Intense and powerful, War Children shares the incredible saga of an ordinary German family during World War II. Looking back from the vantage of seventy years, Michaels memoir directly confronts how his childhood experiences, despite his parents attempt to give him a normal upbringing, were shaped by an epoch of rampant evil under Hitler.
Michael shares how each member of his family had his or her own way of fighting against the regime. His courageous and outspoken aristocratic mother was determined to protect her son from Nazi brainwashing and sacrificed everything but her love and honor to keep her children alive. His father, a promising theater director, rubbed shoulders with the great entertainers of the timeuntil his refusal to join the Nazi Party destroyed his aspirations. But perhaps Michaels love for his baby sister exemplifies the tragedy of a childhood spent in war, for her very life depended on him carrying her to the bomb shelter.
From winding roads twisting through the tall pines of the Black Forest to trucks crammed with refugees, War Children offers a sobering testimony for children victimized by war, past and present.
450 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 10, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2013
I was transfixed by this story about the memories of childhood and those moments of subtle change or minor events that shape relationships and one's life, and the moments of normalcy mixed with the dramatic events of the war.
The details of how a child thinks is fascinating and moving. It made me consider how easy it is to misinterpret these thoughts and intentions because we see their actions through the filter of our experience.
This story is a point-of-view of WWII that I haven't read before and one that will stick with me.
The details of how a child thinks is fascinating and moving. It made me consider how easy it is to misinterpret these thoughts and intentions because we see their actions through the filter of our experience.
This story is a point-of-view of WWII that I haven't read before and one that will stick with me.
December 24, 2012
I am biased because I helped edit this book, and it was written by my father about his life. It is an important story to share.
December 8, 2013
War Through the Eyes of a Child
A review by
Earl B. Russell, author of Cold Turkey at Nine
Michael Tradowsky’s innocent reporting of World War II through the eyes of a child in Germany is a lesson for all of us on the terrors of war among people who are pulled into it involuntarily, children and adults. He chronicles the progression of the entire war as it affects his childhood and his family, starting when he was a small boy, and the aftermath of utter devastation across Germany.
He begins by describing one of the most terrifying days toward the end of the war, when he was ten years old, as artillery, rumbling tanks, and bombing raids shake their small apartment. As had happened to so many of their neighbors and family members in other parts of Germany, Tradowsky and his family most fear a bomb coming through their roof at just the right angle and blowing all of them to bits.
Then he proceeds to describe his early life before the war, his happy family, their trips by train to visit grandparents and other relatives. He overhears foreboding conversations between his parents when they are unaware he’s listening—talk of war, talk of relatives in the military, questions about whether they will survive, fears of death.
But the war soon comes, everything changes, forever.
Tradowsky’s parents oppose Hitler and everything he stood for, but they are extra careful about expressing their opposition. Some of their neighbors who had been a bit too vocal, too public in their opposition, simply disappeared and were not heard from again.
There is another major lesson for any reader of this fine memoir: It is not fair to judge a country and its people by Hitler’s madness and unspeakable evil, by the inhumanity of his minions, and by the gassing and other suffering of the war’s victims. Tradowsky does not make this lesson explicit, but it is inescapable.
Still today, this veiled lesson is sometimes only in the subconscious, if it is even there.
I recommend War Children: A Memoir enthusiastically and without reservation.
A review by
Earl B. Russell, author of Cold Turkey at Nine
Michael Tradowsky’s innocent reporting of World War II through the eyes of a child in Germany is a lesson for all of us on the terrors of war among people who are pulled into it involuntarily, children and adults. He chronicles the progression of the entire war as it affects his childhood and his family, starting when he was a small boy, and the aftermath of utter devastation across Germany.
He begins by describing one of the most terrifying days toward the end of the war, when he was ten years old, as artillery, rumbling tanks, and bombing raids shake their small apartment. As had happened to so many of their neighbors and family members in other parts of Germany, Tradowsky and his family most fear a bomb coming through their roof at just the right angle and blowing all of them to bits.
Then he proceeds to describe his early life before the war, his happy family, their trips by train to visit grandparents and other relatives. He overhears foreboding conversations between his parents when they are unaware he’s listening—talk of war, talk of relatives in the military, questions about whether they will survive, fears of death.
But the war soon comes, everything changes, forever.
Tradowsky’s parents oppose Hitler and everything he stood for, but they are extra careful about expressing their opposition. Some of their neighbors who had been a bit too vocal, too public in their opposition, simply disappeared and were not heard from again.
There is another major lesson for any reader of this fine memoir: It is not fair to judge a country and its people by Hitler’s madness and unspeakable evil, by the inhumanity of his minions, and by the gassing and other suffering of the war’s victims. Tradowsky does not make this lesson explicit, but it is inescapable.
Still today, this veiled lesson is sometimes only in the subconscious, if it is even there.
I recommend War Children: A Memoir enthusiastically and without reservation.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews