Exploring German Identity: A Personal Reflection on the German Way of Life

William R. Burke: 12 years ago we received a phone call from a “search angel” calling from Eastern Germany. My wife’s birth mother wanted to get in touch with her long lost daughter. My wife was adopted by American soldier but both birth parents German. The new German family of ours has been incredible in many ways but reliving the bombings and killing in their area of German (Leipzig, Dresden, and Chemnitz) gave this American male a completely different perspective of what the innocent Germans had to endure. Incredible book from that perspective. After 12 trips now to Saxony, I appreciate all the pain and death my in-laws suffered. Great read from my perspective and wonderful historical facts growing up in rural Germany controlled by the Russians.

United States on Jun 08, 2021

Karleen Goodwin: I read the entire book, although it was difficult to finish. As other's have shared, the book needs a major overhaul by an editor. Formatting issues were constant. The book jumps around, and is difficult to follow. It truly is several different genres. She opens letting us know that she has suffered her whole life because those outside of Germany have condemned the Germans during Nazi rule. Next she jumps into a reprint of a memoir her mother wrote of fleeing and becoming refugees, on her own, with four children (this we learn was written about 20 some years after the events it details). This part I found quite interesting. It is true that many German citizens also suffered during the Hitler years, and it was interesting reading a first hand account. I will also say that her mother's memoir was never self-serving, but very practical and fact based. Her mother states many times how very lucky she and her family were to have met the people they did along the way and that they were reunited with her husband and the children's father after the war. I would recommend only reading this section. After that the author works very hard to convince the reader that the Jewish people who were...

United States on Apr 12, 2021

bert w: Very good and accurate book. Reminded me of my youth in Germany during the same time. The author is just a few years older. I remember all adult conversations whispering because most people hated Hitler and his goons. Negative comments were harshly punished.

I remember the day and night air raids, Americans with high altitude bombings, British with low altitude night time air raids. We lost o ur home 3 times from bombs. We fled, "taking only what we could carry."

What is happening now in the USA , with media censorship etc. is how it starts. Book burning replaced by deleting books on Amazon, etc. If we dont learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

United States on Mar 07, 2021

Arty: Thoughtfully written and carefully examined, this is a memoir from a woman whose first decade was lived in impoverishment and flight, along with her E.Prussian family, during the throes of Hitler’s warring. She incorporates her mother’s recollections which parallel the little girl’s’ vivid memory. After the war and horrors were further revealed, her Mother and returning soldier Father both shut down from the realization of such national shame under the Nazi regime. Her brother died recklessly. Doris and her sister spent their adult lives in two different adopted nations trying to make sense of what happened and why. Doris, raising a family in America, speaks of the enmeshed, crippling shame of “being German”. “All this did not get better with time, it got worse”.

She worked through her depth of reaction later in life with help and her own determination to read widely, understand European history, the reality of the holocaust, the nature of shaming, and how any nation or individuals within nations can move forward not repeating such trauma. She quotes an interviewer during the Nuremburg trial who asked what we all wonder: “...the great decisive question...

United States on Feb 15, 2021