THE ROAD TO LIBERATION: TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS OF WWII
Riveting stories dedicated to celebrating the end of WWII
From USA Today, international bestselling and award-winning authors come a collection filled with courage, betrayal, hardships and, ultimately, victory over some of the most oppressive rulers the world has ever encountered. By 1944, the Axis powers are fiercely holding on to their quickly shrinking territories.
The stakes are high—on both sides:
Liberators and oppressors face off in the final battles between good and evil. Only personal bravery and self- sacrifice will tip the scales when the world needs it most.
Read about a small child finding unexpected friends amidst the cruelty of the concentration camps, an Auschwitz survivor working to capture a senior member of the SS, the revolt of a domestic servant hunted by the enemy, a young Jewish girl in a desperate plan to escape the Gestapo, the chaos that confused underground resistance fighters in the Soviet Union, and the difficult lives of a British family made up of displaced children...
2020 marks 75 years since the world celebrated the end of WWII. These books will transport you across countries and continents during the final days, revealing the height price of freedom—and why it is still so necessary to "never forget".
Stolen Childhood by Marion Kummerow
The Aftermath by Ellie Midwood
When's Mummy coming? by Rachel Wesson
Too Many Wolves in the Local Woods by Marina Osipova
Liberation Berlin by JJ Toner
Magda’s Mark by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger
MY THOUGHTS...
This is a huge book with six full-length novels. So far, I have read three of the six books!
Stolen Childhood by Marion Kummerow
A story of struggle, survival, and sisterly love, Stolen Childhood tells of the horrors that prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had to endure on a daily basis. Following the stories of the sisters, seventeen-year-old Rachel and four-year-old Mindel, who were separated when they arrive at the camp, Stolen Childhood doesn’t leave anything to the imagination when describing the poor conditions that the prisoners were forced to live in.
I admired both Mindel and Rachel while reading this book. While trying to find each other, they both suffer greatly, each with their own trials. Mindel, struggling with hunger and finding safety as she is thrown into the camp alone, without her sister to look after and protect her, has only a ragged doll to clutch to as she tries to find her way alone. She meets Laszlo, who, while only a few years older than her, assumes the role of older brother and looks after Mindel, who worships him. The pair show how even children couldn’t escape the harsh reality of living in a concentration camp and the games that the children play, guessing who will die next and making fun out of their situation show both the resilience of the children and how much their situation twisted their minds to believe that it was normal to play such games. Rachel, being in the Woman’s Camp, is forced to work long, gruelling days in terrible conditions and the way she and the other women are treated by the SS soldiers, even when they can barely stand due to hunger and exhaustion, shows a world of almost unimaginable suffering and the resistance of the prisoners fighting for their lives every second of every day.
This story, while making me cry at times and rooting for Rachel and Mindel to find each other again, was educating in the telling about the awful treatment prisoners at Bergen-Belsen and the characters were real in the telling, making their trials that much more upsetting. I Highly Recommend this story to anyone with an interest in World War II or who wants to know about how terribly the prisoners suffered, but who wants to read about characters they can root for and sympathise with as they join them on the journey of survival.
Magda’s Mark by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger
A story very real in the telling, Magda’s Mark follow the story of Magda, a woman who finds herself thrown into the world of Nazi officers and anti-Semitism when she takes a job in the home of the Taubers’. Her face her own worst enemy, Magda struggles to escape capture and to survive when, in a bid for vengeance, she places a reward on her own head.
Magda is a very real character in the telling. She doesn’t have unlimited amounts of courage and she struggles to deal with the events that unfold around her. She goes from living safely as a servant in the Taubers’ house, where she becomes practically a part of the family, to being on the run and joining the resistance as she fights for survival, a birthmark on her face making it difficult for her to hide. Her realism as a character made me sympathise with her all the more and I found myself hoping that she would survive her trials as everyone she loves and cares for is ripped away from her. Magda’s desire for a family and to save the children that come into her life showed her motherly instincts and as she longed for the children to be in her arms, I wished that she would be reunited with those that were taken from her and that she would survive find peace after the war.
Following a character who, not only has to put up with the house of a family she has come to love being taken over by the family of a Nazi Commanding Officer, but also ends up joining the resistance and fighting in the war herself, Magda’s Mark has moments of joy and sorrow, chapters that brought me to the edge of my seat and those that made me sigh in relief. I Highly Recommend this story to anyone who is after a character to love and to mentally support while reading. Magda’s Mark is definitely a story that will stay with me for a long time.
Liberation Berlin by JJ Toner
Following multiple character’s stories, Liberation Berlin weaves an intricate tale of how characters in different situations and with different stories are weaved together and affect each others lives in ways that are almost unimaginable.
Gretchen, a middle aged woman, struggles with looking after her husband, Oskar, who has long since lost his mind, an after affect from the horrors of war. Oskar is completely dependent on her and Gretchen has created quite a community around her as she tries to support him and keep the both of them fed. She works at a bakery, being paid in bread, which she trades for other supplies; vegetables from the vegetable plot of Hans Klein, meat from Franz, small valuables and trinkets from her friends in exchange for a slice of bread. It is these friends that so quickly desert her when the bread runs out.
The two children, Anton and Inge, show the realities of the war. Anton is a part of the Hitler Youth and is brainwashed into believing that the war is the best thing that has ever happened. Despite being only twelve years old, he is determined to fight in the war, something that worries his parents, making them scared to say anything in case he reports them as enemies of the Reich. Inge, a teenage Jewish girl, lives in the attic of a young woman called Dora, the daughter of one of Gretchen’s old friends. Having been shielded from the horrors of the Soviet army, Inge fears the Gestapo more than anything and Dora struggles to keep her safe as she and the small band of people in Gretchen’s life try to get her to safety.
The intricate stories, woven together in this story, pulled me in from the first few words and I couldn’t put the book down as I read about how each character played an important part in helping the others. Without one, everything would fall apart. The mismatch of people depended on each other for survival and even those who seemed to be against the band of people ended up being their salvation. I Highly Recommend this story of friendship and teamwork that shows how life was for those living in Berlin, from the perspectives of different types of people; the bakers, the people working the allotments, the children and the women trying to keep their families alive, and how these lives made up a community.
Marion Kummerow:
Marion Kummerow was born and raised in Germany, before she set out to "discover the world" and lived in various countries. In 1999 she returned to Germany and settled down in Munich where she's now living with her family.
After dipping her toes with non-fiction books, she finally tackled the project dear to her heart. UNRELENTING is the story about her grandparents, who belonged to the German resistance and fought against the Nazi regime. It's a book about resilience, love and the courage to stand up and do the right thing.
Marina Osipova:
Marina Osipova was born in East Germany into a military family and grew up in Russia where she graduated from the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives. She also has a diploma as a German language translator from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages. In Russia, she worked first in a scientific-technical institute as a translator then in a Government Ministry in the office of international relations, later for some Austrian firms. For seventeen years, she lived in the United States where she worked in a law firm. Eventually, she found her home in Austria. She is an award-winning author and a member of the Historical Novel Society.
Rachel Wesson:
Rachel Wesson is Irish born and bred. Drawn to reading from an early age, she started writing for publication a few years back. When she is not writing, Rachel likes to spend her time reading and playing with her three kids. Living in Dublin there are plenty of things to do, although the cowboys and Indians of her books rarely make an appearance. To chat with Rachel connect with her on Facebook - authorrachelwesson. To check out her newest releases sign up to her mailing list.
My background is in Mathematics and computing, but I have been writing full time since 2005. I write short stories and novels. My novels include the bestselling WW2 spy story 'The Black Orchestra', and its three sequels, 'The Wings of the Eagle', 'A Postcard from Hamburg', and 'The Gingerbread Spy'.
Many of my short stories have been published in mainstream magazines. Check out 'EGGS and Other Stories' - a collection of satirical SF stories. I was born in a cabbage patch in Ireland, and I still live here with my first wife, although a significant part of our extended family lives in Australia.
Ellie Midwood:
Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents.
In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait.
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger:
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger was born in Minnesota in 1969 and grew up in the culture-rich neighborhood of "Nordeast" Minneapolis. She started her writing career with short stories, travel narratives, worked as a journalist and then as a managing editor for a magazine publisher before jumping the editor's desk and pursuing her dreams of writing and traveling. In 2000, she moved to western Austria and established her own communications training company. In 2005, she self-published a historical narrative based on her relatives' personal histories and experiences in Ukraine during WWII. She has won several awards for her short stories and now primarily writes historical fiction. During a trip into northern Italy over the Reschen Pass, she stood on the edge of Reschen Lake and desperately wanted to understand how a 15th-century church tower ends up sticking out of the water. What stories were lying beneath? Some eight years later, she launched the "Reschen Valley" series with five books and a novella releasing between 2018 and 2021.
For more on Chrystyna, dive in at inktreks(dot)com.
