War Children

A Memoir

by Michael Tradowsky

Formats

Softcover

$27.95

E-Book

$3.99

Hardcover

$37.95

Softcover

$27.95

Book Details

Language : English

Publication Date : 12/12/2012

Recognition Programs

Format : Softcover

Dimensions : 6x9

Page Count : 450

ISBN : 9781475954272

Format : E-Book

Dimensions : N/A

Page Count : 450

ISBN : 9781475954258

Format : Hardcover

Dimensions : 6x9

Page Count : 450

ISBN : 9781475954265

About the Book

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, Michael’s 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 time—until his refusal to join the Nazi Party destroyed his aspirations. But perhaps Michael’s 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.

About the Author

Born in Berlin in 1935, Michael Tradowsky lived through World War II as a child and immigrated to the United States in 1958. He taught dentistry at Case Western Reserve University and earned a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art. Tradowsky lives on a farm in Ohio with his wife and sculpts bronzes in his foundry.

Customer Reviews

"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 vei

Earl B Russell
Thanks for helping me to see thgins in a different light.

Linus
Thanks for helping me to see thgins in a different light.

Linus
"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 v

Earl B Russell
Thanks for helping me to see thgins in a different light.

Linus
"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 v

Earl B Russell

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