A fourteen-year-old boy witnesses the upheavals, tragedies and displacement sweeping central Europe right after World War II. The action centers on the Sudetenland, where the native German-speaking population was uprooted and forced into exile by the Czech goverment at the end of the war. The Sudetenland, a former province of Austria which had been given to newly formed Czechoslovakia by the Allies at the end of World War I, was annexed in 1938 to Germany by Hitler before he occupied all of Czechoslovakia. The territory was returned to Czechoslovakia by the victorious Allies in May 1945. Sudden mass expulsions of the native German-speaking population by the new Czechoslovak government began soon after. From occupation by the Russians to dispossession and displacement by a new Czech government, and the tragic loss of his father and older brother, Dr. Helfert relays the history of his family and country during the tumultuous years just after World War II.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
When the Sudetenland was returned to Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII, the former Austrian province, annexed by Hitler in 1938, became the site of "ethnic cleansing" as the Czech government expelled ethnic Germans and expropriated their property. An estimated 250,000 died and more than three million Sudetens became refugees. Among them was Helfert, then 14, and his newly widowed mother; his father, an industrialist, died in a botched operation for a bleeding ulcer shortly after their villa was confiscated. Mother and son eked out a living and narrowly avoided being arrested and taken to an internment camp where Sudetens and Germans died from torture and neglect. Expulsion led them to the U.S. occupation zone of Germany, and this poignant autobiographical memoir closes in 1950, when Helfert departs for America as an exchange student. A management consultant, former Harvard Business School teacher and author of a book on financial analysis, he views the Sudeten's extinction by a chauvinistic, vengeful Prague government as a precursor of contemporary tragedies involving mistreatment of ethnic minorities. Regrettably, by telling his harrowing personal story in a charged yet plodding style, with fictitious names, he considerably blunts its impact as a documentary. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
A poignant autobiographical memoir. -- Publisher's Weekly
The hard and depressing fate of the Sudeten Germans, which was also the fate of your family, will not be left or be forgotten. This especially means that we be made conscious of both the tragedy itself and its consequences, which extend even into our current time. Your [moving family chronicle] makes a good contribution to this end. -- Dr. Helmut Kohl, the Federal Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany
The hard and depressing fate of the Sudeten Germans, which was also the fate of your family, will not be left or be forgotten. This especially means that we be made conscious of both the tragedy itself and its consequences, which extend even into our current time. Your [moving family chronicle] makes a good contribution to this end. -- Dr. Helmut Kohl, the Federal Chancellor, Federal Republic of Germany
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For Helfert and others World War II did not end on V-E Day.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More (Hardcover)
The years of World War II were terrible indeed. During those seven years, millions of innocent people (and some not so innocent) died. Yet, with the arrival of V-E Day, many assumed that the years of death and destruction of innocent people in Europe were over. Strangely, for many, the suffering was only beginning. Beginning in 1945, Europe saw the largest forced migration of its population in history as 11,700,000 people were evicted from their homes where their families had lived for up to 700 years. Of this number, 2,100,000 died en route. Among those deported were 3,000,000 Sudetenlanders, who were expelled from Czechoslovakia and sent to Germany after experiencing many attrocities, and the death of 267,000 of them. The story of these Sudetenlanders is told in Erich Anton Helfert's autobiography, "Valley of the Shadow." If you have any interest in the history of post-World War II Europe, you may enjoy (although that is probably not the right word) Erich Helfert's book. It reads like a novel, but one is warned in the beginning that everything described happened as described. I commend it to you.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tell us your lifes' story !,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More (Hardcover)
I feel very greatful to the author for telling his families story to us. My mother was a child when her family was given the choice to either leave or die. Her parents avoided talking about the terrible journey on foot from the Sudentenland to Germany. The few fragments I know from their tragedy resonate with the story E. A. Helfert has documented in his sensitive and enlighting book. He has experienced the terrors caused by mens irresistible urge of indiscriminate revenge and his story is a warning from history. Yet his story is also one of hope and faith in the good qualities of human mankind. And when these qualities manage to surface in the midst of terror and dispair then they appear like loving miracles. I wished that more people of his generation would write down their lifes' story, so the younger generation can break this cycle of revenge and make miracles.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Important service to humanity,
By karpaten "karpaten" (Albany, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More (Hardcover)
My mother's family are ethnic Germans from Slovakia, and the book touched me personally. For the overall framework, check Alfred de Zayas. By the way, the Prague University was closed for students after riots in 1940 for the time of the war, not because of anti-Slav prejudice (for Hitler, Czechs were half-German anyway, and indeed they are, and most Germans from the Sudetenland and Slovakia are heavily intermarried with Slavs as well), the Czech Protectorate government under pres. Hacha collaborated beautifully (the Czech part was not treated like Poland, but like France under Vichy), esp. the Vlajka, the Czech fascist movement under general Radola Gajda, there was a Czech armed force of 8,000 men, virtually no German soldiers in the countryside, and the food situation was far superior to Germany itself after 1943.Edvard Benes, to justify his blood-orgies against civilians, spoke of 50,000 Czech victims of the war, including Czech workers killed by Allied bombs while working in Germany. He did not claim "300.000." For 250,000 of these were Roma (kept in a camp in Lety created by the Czech government before the occupation in March 1939, and staffed throughout the war by Czech personnel), and Jews, many of whom did not feel "Czech" but as ethnic Jews, Magyar or German, and witnessed this in the 1930 Census. Indeed, Jews who survived the Nazi camps and returned were expelled as well if in 1930 they had (the census asked among else about nationality, which in Europe means ethnicity), declared themselves of Magyar or German ethnicity. Seems somewhat ghoulish to suddenly use these Germans and Magyars (Hungarians) of Jewish faith as excuse for the butchering of the native German population. Not enough Americans know about these terrible events, and the author has done a great service in writing this for an English-speaking audience.
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