Journey Out of Darkness pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025

This book is a poignant collection of portraits, in words and photographs, of nineteen former U.S. prisoners of war who endured captivity in Nazi Germany in World War II. Through these men, one can learn essential truths about the POW experience during that war - many of which counter popular myths and misconceptions. The nineteen men featured here gather every week in offices of the Veterans Administration (VA) in Boston and Brockton, Mass., to talk about their experiences and find comfort in each other. In their eighties and nineties, they are individuals with unique wartime experiences, but also representative of the more than 120,000 American POWs held in Nazi Germany. They are men who fought a double war, in combat and then as POWs. Together, the photos and stories go beyond typical first-person accounts. Until the men in this book began meeting in VA support groups, few had spoken of their POW experiences. Some were told by the military not to talk; others were coerced by military intelligence into signing non-disclosure papers called "security certificates". With little exception, they received no recognition for enduring as POWs, even as they struggled with traumatic memories and shame for having been held captive, for losing power over their fate, and for surviving combat when friends died. These portraits illuminate another little-known story: the plight of Jewish-American POWs, who had to conceal their religious identities from the SS. Some of the POWs in this book, their bodies ravaged by starvation and illness, resembled survivors of the Holocaust by the war's end. The authors powerfully explore these struggles, using both oral histories and photographs to humanise how we think about these men as POWs, survivors, and veterans.