Out of darkness

https://youtu.be/yAG0kPovQe8 

 

Covid lockdown bears all sorts of fruits. Music by a talented young mate of mine Girl Platoon.

Women, War and the Third Reich

When I arrived in Germany in 1973 I had no idea I would spend the next couple of years collecting oral histories but that is what happened. I suffered from culture shock in Germany and my response was to collect oral histories of the women I was living amongst. I asked them about their wartime and postwar experiences. 

It was hard work emotionally for both them and for me as they had often been traumatised by their experiences and had buried them as a way of coping.  My questions brought it all back.  Many women said they had not even told their families about what had happened to them and we wept together as they recounted their stories. 

It turned out to be the best medicine I could have wished for and over the course of those two years I learned to love my adopted home. Several of the women offered to help me publish the stories and I did find a publisher but unfortunately it folded before the book was out and by that time I had enrolled in a science course didn't have time to pursue it further.

The box of interviews (and the research I did in the Wiesbaden public library to help me understand the period the women were talking about) were put in a big box and have traveled with me ever since. I felt, and still feel, indebted to these women and wanted to make sure their voices were heard. I also wanted to publish them to help show how a country can descend into fascism, but we have seen other examples since then and the process probably no longer needs explaining.

So here they are, the voices from times past. Fascinating reading, even now, or perhaps particularly now as the women of this generation are mostly no longer living.  I didn't know whether to publish as eBook as well as paperback. Does anyone read such books on a screen? (Dear reader, if you would read it online, please let me know!) 

 

Available from Amazon and other outlets. Here are the Amazon links:

USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/098731226X

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/098731226X

AU:  https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/098731226X

 DE: https://www.amazon.de/dp/098731226X

 

Time is relative

Can it be June already? It is! 

The 4th June is almost over as I write, the 4th day of winter, although the past two weeks in Sydney have been pretty wintery. 

Covid isolation seems to have changed how we register time. It has made time collapse for me. Or is it just because I have been busy finishing my latest project? (More soon.)

It is the reverse effect to the lengthening of time that sometimes happens when you go on an action packed short holiday and return feeling as if you've been away much longer. I had a four day holiday in Cairns that felt like two weeks about 15 years ago. The effect was so extreme I've not forgotten it. I wonder if, in 15 years, we'll look back and remember this time-collapsed period as vividly.