Feisty Lydia is the personal story of a woman born in 1925 in Neuotting, Germany. Her remarkable spirit helped her to survive a premature birth, the Great Depression, death-defying experiences, the Nazi regime, and war in her home town and country. The story continues when this German war bride journeyed with her young son Johnny aboard an American troop ship to America in 1948, to join her husband John. Read how Lydia used her feisty and optimistic personality to overcome the struggles of life in a new country and to create her Elysian Fields, a place of joy and tranquility, in the city of Elysian, Minnesota. Sprinkled with glimpses of history to provide the setting, the biography of Lydia is created from personal interviews with Lydia, her family, and friends.

Minnesota Heritage Publishing
205 Ledlie Lane
Suite 125
Mankato, MN 56001
phone 507-625-8056
e-mail: julie@mnheritage.com

Description:
Leni Grehl, at the age of 84, has had published an historical memoir of her childhood, her parents' lives, and growing up in Nazi Germany during World War II.

In Love, War & Curling Irons, Grehl relates the uncertainty, panic, and destruction of the war; then continues her story, as she ventures to find her grandparents in Bremen, Germany, and discovers an American sergeant has befriended them. Spellbound by their first encounter, the story portrays the two lives changed by the circumstances of war that brought them together.

Grehl was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1924, and at the age of 13 became an apprentice hairdresser. She immigrated from Bremen in 1947 to marry Fred Grehl, an American soldier. The couple lived and worked in Paw Paw, Michigan for 35 years and raised three children. She was employed by Audrey's Beauty Salon downtown for 25 years. Her husband's family owned a resort on Three Mile Lake in the early 1940's, and later owned and operated a restaurant on Red Arrow Highway called The Bungalow.

The couple, who have eight grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, retired to Carlsbad, New Mexico. After Fred's passing in 2006, Leni moved to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, to live with a daughter.

Grehl's book is presently available through Trafford Publishing for $16.95, and can be ordered through the company's Web site, traffordpublishing.com, or by phone at 1-888-232-4444.

Description:
Anneliese Solich was born in 1926 and grew up in a small town in rural Bavaria, Germany. She saw the rise of Adolf Hitler through youthful eyes. She was 19 when Germany surrendered in May 1945. In 1947, she came to America to become the bride of a Minnesota GI who had befriended her family immediately after the war ended. Teaching herself English, Annelee eventually attended Moorhead State University to become a teacher. She taught German, psychology, civics and English. In 1984, she was selected as one of ten Teachers of Excellence by the Minnesota Education Association. Annelee retired in 1992.

Her book War Child: Growing up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, will help people understand the reason so many Germans supported Hitler and his promises before and during World War II. Written in her own voice, she tells of the day-to-day life of her family and community and captures the perceptions that people had about Hitler, the economy, the reasons for the war and the drastic changes in their lives. It is a real insight into the struggles and the challenges of ordinary Germans.

The book was "Dedicated to the legions of innocent men, women and children of all nations drawn into wars. Their suffering was often much greater than what my family and I had endured."

Description:
The support of a loving family, and especially by Eli, a loving devoted brother without whom I could not have survived a life built on lies, deceit and greed. He was my anchor and in many ways changed my life. In 1943, I married an American soldier while I was serving in the Royal Air Force. He was taken Prisoner of War and eventually returned to the United States. Three years later in 1946 I arrived in the States with the first shipment of War Brides. We were ecstatically happy. In my sixth month of pregnancy my life was in jeopardy because of peritonitis, but with a good surgical team we both survived. Nine weeks later my first child was born and adored by my husband However, two years and six months later my second child was born and when she was six months old, my world came crashing down on me. My husband disappeared for five years. Like my immediate family, my beloved father-in-law also played a big part in my life. My second marriage to my husband who after three years betrayed me once more my dancing career, my lovers, my loss of seven siblings. The torture I endured inwardly, and my smiling face belying my true feelings. Finally, with the guidance, love and support from my brother Eli who took me under his wings showed me the world of poverty, sickness and death,love and hate. As my future 87th. birthday approaches, I consider myself lucky and happy.

About the Author Mary Caldwell is the widow of John Caldwell. She has led an adventurous life on three continents, and is now enjoying retirement in Florida.

Her book started as a project for her family letting them know the story of how she and her husband, Sidney Grant, met during World War II while he was stationed in Germany near her hometown of Mühlheim.

"The True Story of a German War Bride" is Susie Grant's autobiography that tells of World War II in Germany as seen thru the eyes of a young German girl. Her story takes the reader thru her young years, her marriage to an American Soldier, the death of their firstborn and travel to the new country of America where she met her new family. After many years she journeys back to Germany to reunite with her parents and family that was left behind.

Shortly after World War II she met an American soldier in a most unusual way. Nothing would have ever came of the chance meeting had her father accepted her explanation of the casual encounter. But enraged by her speaking with "one of these murderers", he disowned her and made her homeless. Her grandfather came to her rescue. He realized this soldier had nothing to do with what had happened to her family during the war. With the grandfather's help a friendship started which turned into a bittersweet love story. It took many years for her father to realize that the "enemy soldier" was not a bad guy after all.

Born and raised in Germany, Susie Grant followed her American soldier husband to his county, America. Estranged from her parents, she left everything dear to her behind, including her home, family, friends and her country. All because of a chance encounter her father could not accept.

"The True Story of a German War Bride" is truly a work of art. You won't be able to put the book down once you start reading it.

Mrs. Susie Grant's writings are very familiar to Adair Progress readers. Her "Ladies Corner" column has appeared in the Tuesday issue each week for many years.

She met her husband Bill by tripping him on the ice skating rink at St. Moritz in St. Kilda Melbourne on 5th September 1942 and she tells everyone that she has kept him on ice ever since, for 62 years in fact. Their courtship of 3 years was via letters and only seeing each other for a total of 31 days out of those 3 years. Just before their wedding illness struck Ruth in the form of amnesia and the Red Cross rushed Bill down from Finchaven, New Guinea to be with Ruth in Melbourne. This story is well documented in her book and the eventual nuptials. Ruth and Bill have 4 children and 5 grandchildren and now reside on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia where Ruth continues to write her memoirs at the age of 83.

This is a story of love, heartbreak, deception, intrigue, sex on the high seas and a Captain who wanted nothing to do with the 300 Australian War Brides and the 106 children by refusing to come off the bridge. The story takes you into the backlash of a tidal wave; the seasickness, injuries and one in a straight jacket. The story then moves to post WWII and life in mid west America where the author was warmly accepted into her new family.
Visit Ruth's website and watch her video at www.frostmedia.com.au/ruthfrost/

Five years after the war, she met and married an American soldier. Moving to America was just the beginning of many different experiences that awaited her. When the couple had four children, aged thirteen, twelve, nine, and six, they left the U.S. to embark on an eleven-month, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa, the Canary Islands, and Europe. Four years after their return to the U.S., they moved to California, where they remain to this day.

Sadly, a few years later, tragedy struck the family. The book ends 60 years later on Maya's 75th birthday.

This book, a collection of oral histories, tells the story of Mademoiselle and the GI by following the destinies of fifteen French war brides-three from World War I and twelve from World War II. All of these women encountered cultural shock as they discovered an opulent and open society but which was also materialistic and racially segregated. Many of their GI husbands had been traumatized by the war. But the women got on with it and survived. Although about half of the marriages ended in divorce, only about a hundred and fifty of the women returned to France. Most of them, in their own way, lived the American Dream. Today these women are both French and American. They reflect the image of a successful betrothal between two cultures.

About the Author
Dr. Kaiser is the author of two books that exist in both French and English: French War Brides in America (Greenwood, 2007)
Des Amours de GI’s: les petites françaises du Débarquement (Tallandier, 2004) and Veteran Recall: Americans in France Remember the War/Souvenirs de Veterans ( Bayeux, 2004). She is currently working on a third book about children of GI’s and French women after World War II. When Des Amours de GI’s appeared in French bookshops in May 2004, she was invited to speak on Europe 1, France Inter, RFI and other radio stations in Paris, as well as on “Repères de l’Histoire” on France 5 television. She was also interviewed by various journalists in the French press. An article Ms Kaiser wrote on French war brides was published in the May 2004 issue of L’Histoire, and she was invited to give talks on French war brides at the Mémorial Museum in Caen and at other venues in France. In 2006, she was invited to the U.S. by the Alliance Française to give conferences on her research in eight different American cities. Since the publication of her war brides book in English, she has spoken in Paris at the American Library, Brentano's Bookshop, Paris Alumnae Network, and WICE. Her other publications include articles on American religious groups and the American presence in France in the Revue française des Etudes américaines and American Studies International.

Hilary Kaiser is American by birth and the daughter of a GI who fought in Japan during World War II. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Sud and has done many oral histories of Americans living in France. The second edition of her book Veteran Recall: Americans in France Remember the War was published in June 2004.

List Price: $44.95 0-275-99398-1/978-0-275-99398-6 Pages: Publication: 11/30/2007
To order, visit www.greenwood.com, call 1-800-225-5800.

List Price: £25.95 0-275-99398-1/978-0-275-99398-6 Pages: Publication: 11/30/2007
Fax Orders to: +44 (0)1865 314981 • Order by phone: +44 (0)1865 888181 • Order by email:
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Book cover of Sala's Gift, the story of Ann Kirschner's mother's experiences in Nazi labor camps. Back in 1991, a week before triple-bypass surgery was scheduled for her, 67-year-old Sala Garncarz Kirschner decided to give up her decades-old cigarette habit. Before she entered the hospital, Sala also decided to give up her decades-old secrecy. She produced a red cardboard box and gave it to her daughter for safe-keeping, saying simply, "You should have this."

That daughter, Ann, thought at first the box might contain jewelry, but instead out poured more than 350 items-letters, government and war-related documents, diary entries, and photographs-recreating the heroic and harrowing story of Sala's odyssey through seven Nazi labor camps in Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia between 1940 and 1945, her late teens and early 20's.

Ann Kirschner, newly appointed Dean of the CUNY Honors College, writes that the cardboard box changed her life, setting her off on a journey of discovery to put these materials, written in Polish, Yiddish, but mostly German, into familial and historical context. After solving many puzzles evoked by the trove and numerous subsequent interviews with Sala and her one surviving sister, Raizel, as well as many Holocaust survivors, Kirschner has now published Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story (Free Press).

That the memorabilia-most importantly the letters Sala received from family and friends-survived at all was a miracle. Perhaps the only good thing about labor camps was that mail and care packages were allowed. At great risk of punishment by her S.S. guards, Sala began to save and hide her letters. The precious hoard grew and, amazingly, she succeeded in keeping it on her person when shunted from one camp to the next. Months after the ordeal was over, Sala wrote triumphantly to the only other of 11 Garncarz siblings alive at war's end, Raizel and Blima (who died in 1953), "I have the pictures of our dear father and dear mother, together with all the mail I received from home... I watched it and guarded it like the eyes in my head, since it was my greatest treasure."

Portrait of Sala as age 12. Kirschner's study vividly recreates life in the Jewish community of the medium-size Polish city of Sosnowiec in Upper Silesia as the Nazis began their genocidal work (only 4,000 of the city's 28,000 Jews survived), working through Jewish collaborators in the Jewish Council of Elders. The villain in Sosnowiec was one Moses Merin, who finally lost his usefulness, was arrested, and gassed himself at Oswiecim, renamed by the Germans Auschwitz.

A notable virtuoso of evil in the book is Albrecht Schmelt, the creator of a vast chain of labor camps called Organization Schmelt. At its height there were 177 Schmelt factories, most of them devoted to major construction projects and production of war materiel. One Oskar Schindler ran several of them. Ordered into the system by Merin, Sala worked at several of them.

But the heart of Sala's Gift is the revelation, on almost every page, of Sala's sheer will to endure amid horrific brutality. Allowed one brief visit home from a camp, she tried to lift her family's spirits: "Yes, I will be back! I'm here now, aren't I? I was away-but I came back. Be strong, I will return!" But her father saw the future. Sala would never forget his reply. "He went on, in a direct and solemn way... 'My dear child, I will never see you again.'" Josef Garncarz was right. An appendix in Sala's Gift lists about 40 immediate and extended family members who died in the extermination camps, including Josef and his wife Chana.

Sala's early diary passages now and then capture the weight of separation and all the ambient brutality. Early on, at her first camp, she records, "The world is moaning, life is terrible, and there is much to lament... The world is complaining, and there is a void around us." But the more common note is one of determined optimism. Sala boasts, justly, in one letter, "I am one stubborn girl." That grit was especially needed as the Nazis were being pushed back on the eastern and western fronts in 1944 and as labor camps were closed, their workers put on trains or death marches to the gas chambers.

First page of Sala's diary, entry of October 28, 1940. Perhaps the most fascinating character in Sala's story (worthy of Hollywood treatment) is a jaunty, charismatic Polish Jew named Ala Gertner. She happened to be present when Sala was put on the train to her first labor camp. An older woman, she took the frightened teenager under her wing and made Sala her protégé from her position of some influence with the Nazis (she worked for a while in the offices of Moses Merin). Some of the most poignant saved letters are from Ala written after the two were sent to different factories.

Kirschner's most riveting pages recount Ala's heroic end. By mid-1943, her relatively comfortable life in the offices of labor camps ended, and she was transported to a factory making explosive devices adjacent to the Auschwitz crematoria. Ala joined three other women in the camp's underground resistance who were assigned to the gunpowder room. Their conspiracy was to save out tiny amounts of powder, make a bomb of their own, and then blow up a crematorium. On October 7, 1944, their plot succeeded.

This so-called Auschwitz Uprising caused a huge furor and intense investigation, described in detail by Kirschner. The conspirators were caught and executed on January 5, 1945. The last roll call at Auschwitz was, heartbreakingly, a mere 12 days later. A monument to the four is in the garden of the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

By June of 1946, Sala was settled in an East Harlem apartment as the bride of Sidney Kirschner, an American soldier. "She hid the box of letters," Kirschner writes. "She said nothing about them or about her life during the war for nearly fifty years."

A few years after Sala's letters saw the light, Ann, her parents, and her brothers Joseph and David paid their only visit back to Sosnowiec. Returning to the still-standing one-room Garncarz apartment on Kollataja Street, Sala summed up with eloquent simplicity into a tape recorder: "This is the worst experience of my life.... All I see is the family I left here, and I have come back to a terrible, terrible dirty little room that is hardly fit for anyone to live in. And yet here I grew up and loved everything in it. I don't see 'things.' I just see my people. I see them in every corner."

Happily, Kirschner reports that her parents are alive and well, living upstate in Monsey, New York. "But they do winter in Florida." Sala's letters now reside in the Dorot Jewish Division at the N.Y.P.L and can be found online at www.nypl.org and www.letterstosala.org.

The Americans created a replica of their world, with dance halls, theatres and bowling alleys, in the midst of small outports where the way of life still echoed traditions established in the 1600s.

With just about every local woman looking for a new life, what chance did a fisherman, a labourer or even a local businessman have next to the rich and romantic Americans? From the beginning of the Second World War until the recent end of the Cold War, when the last base closed, as many as 40,000 Newfoundland women married Americans.

Seven Brides for Uncle Sam tells the stories of seven Newfoundland women who married American servicemen. Here, the events of world history are but a back drop to their personal stories of romance, heartbreak and joy.

The Tenth Frontier is a 12-part series highlighting 50 years of NFB films from and about Newfoundland and Labrador. From touching personal stories, to portraits of public figures, to windows on ways of life now past, The Tenth Frontier is a treasure of historical films and fresh perspectives.

The war brides’ stories have been told in memoirs, romantic novels, and immigration history. Barbara Friedman sheds new light on their experiences by focusing on media representations of sexuality and marriage in wartime, showing how mass media interpretations turned from public suspicion of war brides to popular acceptance.

Friedman tells how British media first insisted that GIs had come to fight, not to woo the locals, and shrugged off the first brides as an “American problem.” Yet, as Friedman shows, the British media were complicit in encouraging the relationships in the first place: the British press promoted a hospitality program that deemed the entertainment of American troops “patriotic duty,” while women’s magazines hailed American men as ideal husbands and the United States as a promised land.

From the American perspective, Friedman reveals, despite rules against foreign marriages, the U.S. Army encouraged GI-civilian fraternization through armed service publications, attitudes toward GI sexuality, and participation in the hospitality program. Armed service publications went from depicting British women as “frowsy dames” to honoring them as models of domesticity, while newspapers back home eventually legitimized the marriages by casting the brides as welcome additions to American society. Meanwhile, American women’s magazines viewed them as more similar to than different from their American counterparts and called on readers to help British brides master American homemaking.

By combining letters and diaries of brides with published accounts, Friedman identifies accuracies and inaccuracies in the media record as well as gaps in coverage. She considers how the brides saw themselves compared to their media images and shows how the media co-opted brides as symbols of the Anglo-American “special friendship,” postwar power imbalance, and gendered ideals of marriage and domestication.

From the Battlefront to the Bridal Suite is the untold story of overlooked participants in the most celebrated drama of the twentieth century—women whose lives were shaped profoundly by a war that was more than just a male enterprise. It shows the power of the press in the most unlikely matters and suggests a broader definition of the wartime experience.

About the Author
Barbara G. Friedman is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

The result is a gripping and poignant production, a tribute to the strength of the human spirit. ArtsPower hopes to touch the hearts and minds of old and young alike by adapting a survivor’s story, to inspire audiences to read and learn more about the Holocaust by weaving an emotional bond through art.

As they show young people what happened in Germany and in other occupied nations prior to and during World War II – and how a heroine survived thanks to her own courage and the generosity of others – ArtsPower will teach them the importance of combating intolerance. The ultimate goal is to motivate children not only to appreciate reading and the theatre but also to love and respect all their fellow human beings.

The Kindertransport Association (KTA) is a not-for-profit organization of child holocaust survivors who were sent, without their parents, out of Austria, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain.

So, This is America

My career as a trained classical dancer was dead. To survive the desolation of the postwar years, I had worked for the US Special Service entertaining American troops and, for the most part, they had treated me well. But with the rotation of the fighting units came many changes in attitude, conditions and opportunities. The replacements expressed more hostility toward the Germans, cut out all special privileges such as meals, transportation and housing, and the Special Service brought so many shows now from the US that the demand for German entertainers dwindled.

In 1946, desperate to keep on dancing and working, I joined a Hungarian troupe. During this time, I met Robert, a GI and advanceman for an American show, who took an obsessive fancy to me, found out that I was German, not Hungarian, traveling under a false ID, and took advantage of it. Crude, brazen, obtrusive, he had the attitude that “to the victor belong the spoils.” His attentions rejected, he bribed his way into my hotel room one night and under threats to have the troupe and me arrested, added me to his list of conquests. This marked the end of my career. I became pregnant and had to be grateful that he admitted to being the father and wanted to marry me.

Robert’s stateside family was not at all thrilled to have a so called ‘Fraulein’ or ‘German Nazi’ as a daughter-in-law, who they believed had entrapped their son. At the same time, German sentiments were no kinder. Tagged as an Ami-Liebchen, my child and I were branded with shame. Desperation persuaded me to take the plunge into the unknown and follow my rapist to the United States to be his wife.

This is my story.
To Order go to www.elfihornby.com

Melancholy Baby: The Unplanned Consequences of the G.I.s' Arrival in Europe for World War II

More than a million American G.I.s were crammed into the UK prior to the invasion of France during World War II. Wherever they landed, the G.I.s took the British population by surprise. Very few people had ever met a real American before. In those days, the U.S. was more remote than Siberia is to the present generation. All anyone knew about Americans had been learned from the silver screen. How could they be resisted? We can only guess at the total number of children that the G.I.s left behind. Figures quoted have varied from 10,000 to 100,000 but there are no official sources on which to base these numbers. Not surprisingly, these children today represent as much of a social cross section as the women who dated the G.I.s. But regardless of background, they all share the common goal of wanting to find the American father who holds the other half of their personal history. This book relates the social history of the military situation of World War II in Europe. It records how many British were dazzled by and fell in love with American G.I.s who arrived in the U.K. to train for the Invasion of France. Although some married their sweethearts, many more did not. Meanwhile, on the Continent, young women who became pregnant ended up in dire social straits. What is important now is that the children of these liaisons should have the opportunity to learn about the missing half of their heritage. Pamela Winfield, president of TRACE, a nonprofit group that helps these children find missing parents, tells us their stories.

Man and Woman, War and Peace 1941 – 1951

A Dual Autobiography: Verbatim from Their Letters and Diary

All married couples will immediately appreciate, and benefit from, the lessons in marriage so forthrightly revealed in this uniquely veridical recording of married life. From courtship and honeymoon through the first 10 years the ecstasy, uncertainties, and contentions that seem inevitably to bestir relations between the sexes have been captured on line in their letters, and the daily diary of Elizabeth.

However, this is much more than a study in the vagaries of love. World War II is not only the background but the daily life of these participants. It loomed continually in their brief courtship, that was followed within 3 months by Pearl Harbor. Then the Army for Robert and the Atomic Bomb project for Elizabeth. Throughout the 4 years of repeated separation their daily letters convey not only their erotic longings, but the life of a draftee, officer training, war adventures in Italy and the Mediterranean, the bordellos of Karachi, North Atlantic convoy nights in fog, shipwreck in the Azores, plus ample philosophical commentary; and the trials of pregnancy and birth. Postwar life sees the transformation of the lovers into father and mother, home owners, student, and, finally, triumph as an embryo Professor of Physiology. In all, a whirlwind of life’s experiences, in remarkable diversity, replete with poetry, deeply divisive quarrels, and reasoned insight into how this swiftly moving marriage succeeded in achieving a wondrous level of enduring bliss and contentment.
The book can be viewed in its entirety on www.books.google.com under the search for "Robert Doty".

ISBN: 0-533-14331-4
Book Size: 6 x 9
Num. Pages: 693
Author's Bio:
Robert W. Doty and Elizabeth N. Doty

TSUCHINO:
MY JAPANESE WAR BRIDE

Interracial marriages are largely accepted in today’s modern American culture, but that has not always been the case. During the post World War II era, American servicemen and their Japanese war brides were scorned in both countries for wedding ‘the enemy‘. Yet, many love stories between American servicemen and their Japanese brides had their origins under these distressing conditions.

One grateful husband pays tribute to his own Japanese bride of forty-five years by writing the true story of their love in a rich, historically accurate autobiography. Tsuchino, My Japanese War Bride. Michael J. Forrester makes the claim that his Japanese war bride is a most remarkable woman and then delivers the proof in a compelling and true story between two people from different cultures in a time when interracial marriages, let alone a marriage to someone viewed as “the enemy”, were uncommon and generally unacceptable.

Forrester makes his case for his wife‘s remarkableness by asking, “How many women have lived through the horrors of war with bombs falling on their homes? And how many have experienced the devastation of foreign occupation and defeat of their countrymen and then later married one of the enemy? How many women have had the strength to move to a foreign land with nothing but one sparse suitcase in hand? How many women can transcend the prejudice and disdain of others and still maintain their beautiful character?”

“Michael and Tsuchino’s story of love transcends cultural and language barriers at a time in American history when marriage between two different races was a rare occurrence,” explains Regina F. Lark, Ph.D. UCLA Center for the Study of Women and Women’s Studies Programs.

“His memoir of a successful transnational, interracial marriage makes a wonderful contribution to Japanese history, U.S. history and Japanese-American history,” says Velina Hasu Houston, Professor of Theatre, resident playwright and Director of Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California School of Theatre. “These (Japanese) women have risen above prejudice and stereotype to live and live well.”

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THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES:
LOVE, SEX, and WORLD WAR II

Early reaction to the book has been overwhelmingly positive. The stories of ordinary people during extraordinary times paint a picture of young men and women caught up in the passion and uncertainty of war. Their lives were turned upside down and, while they could not have imagined the consequences, relationships between the sexes for generations to follow would be forever changed.

Read am excerpt from the book

Michi's Memories:
The story of a Japanese war bride

Michi's Memories centres on the life story of a Japanese woman who went through the Pacific war, the occupation of Japan and migration to Australia. Her experiences led from Japan to New Guinea during the war, and from Japan to Australia in the post-war period. In her own words, Michi tells how she tried to become an Australian wife and mother in spite of her different cultural background. Now in her eighties, she reflects upon her experiences over the past fifty years. Her children also give their own views on their mother's experience.

Keiko Tamura's sensitive study reveals the difficulties the women faced in Australia when general hostility toward Japan as an ex-enemy nation was still strong, and the idea of "white Australia" was widely accepted. It examines how the women demonstrated their strength throughout the process of adaptation to a drastically different culture through their flexibility and resilience. The book also examines the historical background of how a young Japanese woman met a young Australian soldier in occupied Japan, and touches upon the recent development of network formation among the war brides.

The War Bride's Tale
by Manja Beukman

Talk of Many Things
by Margaret Wharton

Her book is a highly polished piece of work comprising an ingenious blend of people, places, history, geography, and literature. Mrs. Wharton has a vast knowledge of history and excellent control of language along with a vivid descriptive flair. She reproduces her experiences with clarity and conviction.

Talk of Many Things offers a colorful, informative, and individual account of a unique experience shared by a number of young women, not only from England, but from many other countries, in the immediate post war years.

About the Author
Margaret Wharton (nee Biggs) was born in England in 1917 and spent the war years teaching in evacuation areas. She married Lt. David Wharton and came to the U.S. in 1946, teaching school and raising two sons in New Jersey. A watercolorist, accomplished needlewoman, and choir singer who has traveled extensively, she is now retired in Chapel Hill, NC.

War Brides and Memories of World War II
by Elizabeth Hawthorne

Love and War
by Carol Fallows

Memoir of a French War Bride
by Jeannine Ricou-Allunis

Focusing on the conservative reaction to the American military presence, Hohn shows that Germany's Christian Democrats, though eager to be allied politically and militarily with the United States, were appalled by the apparent Americanization of daily life and the decline in morality that accompanied the troops to the provinces. Conservatives condemned the jazz clubs and striptease parlors that Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe opened to cater to the troops, and they expressed scorn toward the German women who eagerly pursued white and black American GIs. While most Germans rejected the conservative effort to punish as prostitutes all women who associated with American GIs, they vilified the sexual relationships between African American men and German women. Hohn demonstrates that German anxieties over widespread Americanization were always debates about proper gender norms and racial boundaries, and that while the American military brought democracy with them to Germany, it also brought Jim Crow.

Go to: University of North Carolina Press to order.

From Britain With Love: World War II Pilgrim Brides Sail to American

Bittersweet Decision:
The War Brides 40 years later

Valentina, A Russian War Bride's Story

This is the true story of a woman of faith and courage--a story the author was inspired to write in memory of her own mother, who was a towering source of spiritual strength and wisdom during the unbelievably difficult times of war. In her book, the writer shares an intimate glimpse of the lives of her parents, Sofia Kologrecki (from Poland) and Efrem Sorogovets (from Belarus); of events in her own childhood growing up in the small Belarusian village of Podloshitsa, with her sister and her brother, Vatya; the years leading up to the outbreak of the War; and the terrible experiences of enslavement and a thousand-mile deportation by the Nazis from Dnepropetrovsk, in the Ukraine, to a forced labor camp in Feucht, Germany.

This is also a story of liberation, triumph, and love, as she describes the events that led from captivity to freedom; the fulfillment of a life-long dream of going to America; and the profoundly emotional circumstances that unfolded in her marriage to one of the American soldiers who liberated her.

Overpaid, Oversexed, and Over Here": The American Gi in World War II Britain

German War Bride Elfi Hornby has two books dealing with her life.

Dancing to War

Shadow of Defeat

A Canadian war bride who moved to the United States to marry an American GI she met during World War 2. Pearl Collis was born in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. In 1942, she moved to Argentia, Newfoundland to work on the US Army base. There, she met her future husband, John Kochansky from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Pearl's book, To Johnnie, With Love, tells the story of their lifelong love set against the backdrop of the army base during the Second World War.
ISBN: 1-894463-35-8
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Flanker Press www.flankerpress.com
Released: June 2003
Available at Amazon.com

The Meeting of Anni Adams:
The Butterfly of Luxembourg

INTRODUCTION: Nature and science teach us that a butterfly cannot reenter its cocoon once it has developed; once it has freed itself to life on the wind and vineyards; without recourse or return. I tend to disagree with that unfortunate observation and terminal inequity because I have found such a creature that does that very thing. While the cocoon, brown, dark brown, or even black in color, depicts an outward personification of unattractiveness, it is the inner containment that explains its need, purpose and existence. Why shouldn’t we look at such an object and examine the beauty on the mere outside? The shiny, glossy appearance of the smooth object. Its impregnable fortress-like strength and resolve to protect what lies inside. It is the epitome of the “judging a book by its cover.” The lackluster shell doing such a marvelous job of harbouring a very precious cargo.
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Abanboned War Bride
Monique´s Miraculous Destiny

The beginning of the book is the story of a hard working big family who were making progress before the war described by a young lady. When WWII began, dramatic changes took place such as the loss of freedom, food, and education for the children. The misery increased when the father of that family lost his vision. (the most dramatic chapters in the book).

Liberation was welcome but the young lady became infatuated with an American soldier and married him. Her arrival in the US, as a War Bride, was a dramatic situation because he had abandoned her in rural Mississippi. She took refuge in New Orleans, La. and had to face shocks and solve her problems by herself at that age.( the most discouraging chapters in the book).

As time passed, one of the greatest love story ever told develops of two strangers, which was God´s plan. This young lady found Love and happiness with a family. These stories are followed by many events taking place in Mobile and Birmingham, Al. There are also many comical stories and details of traveling in Europe as well as her husband recounting his war experiences in the US Navy Sea Bees in the Pacific theater during WWII. (the most rewarding chapters in the book).

The young lady who is telling the story as far back as she can remember is a grandmother today and is telling the stories to her children who are BABY BOOMERS and to her grandchildren who are very curious and want to know everything. This memorable life story is an open book to discussion and sharing a unique quality of life with all of our family and friends. ( the most unique story ever told).

I hope this book will influence others to write their stories to their children, grandchildren, and to their friends. " Our children cannot know who they are if they do no know where their parents came from and how they come about to live in this country especially if they are born in another part of the world." Today, there is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about because people make mistakes and we learn from them. We all have regrets, secrets and confessions to make and what a relief it is in someone´s life to tell it all.
ISBN: 1-4010-8107-X or Xilbrids.com

Powers of Fate

Unlike the many wonderful books written celebrating the love and courage of war brides, this story details the unpredictable chain of events in each of the main character's live which bring them together. Rich with colorful characters, such as mobsters, eccentric priests, fashion designers and endearing rogues, this novel carries the reader across three continents on one couple's journey of personal growth and discovery. For anyone whose parents or grandparents were a part of this extraordinary experience, Powers of Fate will transport you back to that time in their lives and allow you witness the love, passion and bravery of this remarkable generation.

Bottle Dreams

Eighty-six-year-old Monette Goetinck's Bottled Dreams is a compelling and true story chroniclingthe fate that awaited herself and six other French North African war brides half a century ago in America, following their hastily-entered marriages to American soldiers in the tumultuous days that marked the end of World War II. These U.S. servicemen were complete strangers to Goetinck and the other women who, given the idealization created by war and the desire to escape war-ravaged North Africa, perceived them as young American warriors, imbued with friendliness, healthy aliveness, and unending generosity. As Goetinck writes, "They were good guys, easy to like, easy to fall in love with."

In January 1946 Goetinck left Algeria aboard the U.S.S. Bald Eagle, a rust-streaked liberty ship bound for America and her blond, American savior. On board she and the other war brides , Nadia, Marie, Arlette, Emma, Lola and Gisle, share their cast-off pasts and their future dreams. Half-way across the Atlantic, Goetinck suggested they write their hopes and dreams on notes, after which they stuffed the notes into an empty Cognac bottle, and tossed it into the sea.

Goetinck's Bottled Dreams gives a poignant account of the hardships she and her new-found friends encountered in America after having ironically survived a tragic war. Goetinck herself was forced by Algerian law to leave her seven-year-old son behind with her former husband when she emigrated to America. It was fourteen years before she was to see him again.

Love Stories:
Romances of War World II