Author(s): Steve Liddle

NZ History | Military

How do you survive imprisonment in war? How do you live afterwards? Each of these first-hand accounts by WWII prisoners of war provides unique insights into these questions. They also take readers back to a century of world wars, the collapse of civilised values, and eventual discovery of trauma's intergenerational impacts. In 30 interviews Steve Liddle records a wide range of POW testimonies - including those of nine widows. From twins who survived concentration camps, soldiers captured in Greece, Crete and North Africa, the sister of a resistance fighter in Amsterdam, an Italian sailor met by chance in a Roman Street, each interview reveals the triumphs - and limits - of the human spirit. And a much better understood toll of the war inside.