Family Histories of World War II

Róisín Healy is Senior Lecturer in European History at NUI Galway, Ireland. She is the author of Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination, 1772–1922 (2017) and The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany (2003). She has also edited or co-edited four books, including Small Nations and Colonial Peripheries in World War I (2016; as co-editor) and 1916 in Global Context: An anti-Imperial moment (2017; as co-editor).Gearóid Barry is Lecturer in European History at NUI Galway, Ireland. He is the author of The Disarmament of Hatred: Marc Sangnier, French Catholicism and the Legacy of the First World War, 1914-45 (2012). He is also the co-editor, along with Enrico Dal Lago and Róisín Healy, of Small Nations and Colonial Peripheries in World War I (2016) and 1916 in Global Context: An anti-Imperial moment (2017).

• List of FiguresList of TablesAcknowledgmentsNotes on Contributors1. From Generation to Generation: World War II Narratives in Transition, Róisín Healy (NUI Galway, Ireland) and Gearóid Barry (NUI Galway, Ireland)Part I. Lives in Uniform: Enduring Combat and Captivity2. Nothing Spectacular to Remember? Dealing with Wartime Memories in a German Family, Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa (NUI Galway, Ireland)3. The Returning POW and a Wartime Volunteer: A Love Story, Sheena Fennell (NUI Galway, Ireland) and Gill Fennell (Independent Scholar, Ireland)4. Educating Friends and Enemies: An Irishman’s Experiences in Wartime Britain, Patricia Scully (NUI Galway, Ireland)5. The Diary of an Italian Officer in Nazi Concentration Camps, 1943-1945: The Forgotten History of Italian Military Internees, Marina Ansaldo (NUI Galway, Ireland)6. Behind Enemy Lines: The Story of an American Soldier and the Italian Family who Saved Him, Colleen Maloney Williamson (Independent Scholar, USA) and Maureen Maloney (NUI Galway, Ireland)7. From El Alamein to Bergen-Belsen: An Irish Dental Officer's War, Ciara Boylan (NUI Galway, Ireland) 8. Recording the War in Connemara: A Guianese Sailor in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cormac Ó Loideáin (NUI Galway, Ireland)Part II. Lives under Seige: Coping with Occupation 9. A Spanish Communist in the French Resistance: Uncle Luís and a German Map, Sara Farrona (NUI Galway, Ireland)10. A Boy in Small-Town Germany from Home Front to Allied Occupation, Hermann Rasche (NUI Galway, Ireland)11. A Child’s View of War: Nazi Occupation, Resistance, and Civil War in Northeastern Italy, 1943-1945, Enrico Dal Lago (NUI Galway, Ireland)12. A Greek Tragedy: A Small Village at War, Constantinos G. Efthymiou (NUI Galway, Ireland)13. A Russian Jewish Family Remembers the Siege of Leningrad, Irina Ruppo (NUI Galway, Ireland)14. Slave Labour and its Legacies: My Maternal Grandparents' Journey from Ukraine to Germany to Belgium, Sylvie Mossay (NUI Galway, Ireland)Select Further ReadingNotesIndex

The stories in this anthology are gripping … This book will make an excellent text for courses on World War II, especially ones focusing on the social history of the conflict … Historians and social scientists seeking to document the current war in Ukraine should definitely add this work to their bookshelf.