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Through a precious cache of WWII letters, a story of war is revealed. But also, most movingly, a story of love, resilience and survival, from award-winning and bestselling writer, Peter Rees. Doug Heywood was a grown man when he discovered, in a shoe box hidden in a wardrobe, a t...ime capsule of sorts - hundreds of letters, all written by his father, Scott Heywood, to his mother, Margery. Scott, a POW on the infamous Burma Railway, wrote letters almost daily to his young wife, on scraps of paper that had to be hidden from guards. These letters tell us of an enduring love - and also, intriguingly, they tell us how Scott managed to make it through the most brutally testing circumstances. Scott's story bears an uncanny resemblance to another story, coincidentally happening 7000 kilometres away. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, was rounded up with his family and sent to Auschwitz in September 1942. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, Frankl wrote, the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Scott Heywood and Viktor Frankl, on opposite sides of the world, had seen the accepted structures and certainties of their worlds turned upside down. Each faced his own psychological challenge; each responded to the life force of survival. Frankl's story has been told, not so that of Scott Heywood and his journey on the Burma Railroad. This is the singular story of one man, one relatively ordinary man, and his war. But much, much more than that, it's a book about how Scott Heywood is a shining example of how love, optimism and determination can get you through even the very worst, most physically and mentally challenging times.
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The extraordinarily moving memoir by Australian Slovakian Holocaust survivor Magda Hellinger, who saved an untold number of lives at Auschwitz through everyday acts of courage, kindness and ingenuity. In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and ne...arly a thousand other young Slovakian women were deported to Poland on the second transportation of Jewish people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The women were told they'd be working at a shoe factory. At Auschwitz the SS soon discovered that by putting Jewish prisoners in charge of the day-to-day running of the accommodation blocks, camp administration and workforces, they could both reduce the number of guards required and deflect the distrust of the prisoner population away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and over three years served in many prisoner leader roles, from room leader, to block leader - at one time in charge of the notorious Experimental Block 10 where reproductive experiments were performed on hundreds of women - and eventually camp leader, responsible for 30,000 women. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: using every possible opportunity to save lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS, and risking torture or execution. Through her bold intelligence, sheer audacity, inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz's most notorious Nazi senior officers including the Commandant, Josef Kramer. Based on Magda's personal account and completed by her daughter Maya's extensive research, including testimonies from fellow Auschwitz survivors, this awe-inspiring tale offers us incredible insight into human nature, the power of resilience, and the goodness that can shine through even in the most horrific of conditions.
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