Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered

I read this book looking for answers. I grew up listening to stories that were almost identical to this book. I didn't understand why my mother was in a labor camp as a child after the war. Her family has made the same mistake of not leaving in time. The war was over and they niavely believed life would return to normal. It is good to know that someone has told the story.

This book should be read by all Danube Swabians and their offsprings as well as all freedom-loving, truth seeking and fair minded people of this world.

Luisa Lang Owen's recounting of her childhood and the losses she and others experienced before, during and after the war, including three years in a concentration camp is, at once, both hauntingly beautiful and horrific. Her captors, in seeking to exterminate individuals and their culture ironically distilled, in this young woman, the essence of being. Her lush and loving attention to detail, her artistic perceptions were heightened and strengthened in those years, and what we sometimes refer to as the "strength of the human spirit" is clearly defined in the telling of this woman's coming of age under life-threatening conditions. Both fascinated and saddened by the telling, I felt as if I'd entered the spirit of someone who has always lived and continues to live fully and attentively in the world.