Fates from WW2
Research project: Life stories from Danes who carried out military duties on both the allied and the German sides
Contact person: Sven Arvid Birkeland
This book provides an overview of the impact that participation in
World War II had on the involved on both sides of the front: What
war does to human beings. The book contains a number of interviews
for which there was no space in my book "Captured by the Germans"
(Gyldendal 2007), and, as something "new", which is possible today
60 years after the war, interviews with Danes who served on the
side of the Germans.
A number of people from the Danish Free Legion (a legion
established in 1941 consisting of Danes who served in the German
army against the Russians) have volunteered to tell their story and
talk about their war traumas. Those who survived and returned to
Denmark were sentenced to 2-4 years in prison and had to live with
their traumas concealed since then. As in my other books, I have
interviewed their children and grandchildren as well.
Gyldendal, Autumn 2012.