Abandoned and Forgotten

Abandoned and Forgotten:
An Orphan Girl’s Tale of Survival During World War II
by Evelyne Tannehill ©2006

About the book: “Much has been written about World War II, but not often do we hear about the immeasurable suffering of the Germans who wanted no part of Hitler’s regime.

 

Abandoned and Forgotten is the memoir of a young girl growing up in the then-German province of East Prussia by the Baltic Sea. Orphaned at the age of nine and left to fend for herself in a hostile world, Evelyne Tannehill witnessed firsthand what happens when law and order break down and self-preservation becomes the only thing that matters. Her journey is a poignant example of how resilient the human spirit can be, even in the face of war’s greatest horrors.

The author, Evelyne Tannehill, was born in January of 1936 in the German province of East Prussia. She was a dual citizen of Germany and the United States due to the US citizenship of her father. She lived and attended school in Germany until the age of sixteen at which time she came to the United States.”

I’ve heard the history and seen photos of what Hitler’s army did to the Jews, as you probably have. This book, however, tells another side of the story – what happened to the German citizens when first the Russian army and then the Polish people took over what was then East Prussia. It’s told from the viewpoint of a little, orphaned German girl and what she went through will break your heart. I know I never could have survived the things she did and the fact that she did survive and live to tell about it is amazing. The book is written in a very straightforward way and pulls no punches. As Ms. Tannehill’s friend Georg said to her many years later, “The cruelty of war spares no one. Good and evil have no nationality. In war, atrocities are committed on all sides.” Read the book and hopefully, you’ll take something good away from it. I know I’ll be thinking about it for some time.

For more about the book visit http://www.abandonedandforgotten.com/ .

ISBN: 978-1-58736-693-2

Publisher: Wheatmark
SRP: $29.95
431 pp.

I received this book in return for doing a review from Author Marketing Experts, Inc.