My Father had this Luger... A True Story of Hitler's Greece

My Father had this Luger... A True Story of Hitler's Greece
Publisher
Age Range
8+
Release Date
March 15, 2012
ISBN
978-0-9823734-3-9
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THE BOY’S FATHER RAN A COMPOUND FOR PRISONERS OF WAR IN ATHENS. One day he brought home a Luger pistol. It had been confiscated from a captured German pilot. In the boy’s wide eyes it was a thing of beauty. The year was 1941. Hitler’s forces were close to conquering Greece, ushering in the years of German Occupation. To the boy Evangelos, the Luger would come to stand for all the armed might of the Nazis. And for their fatal weakness. Yet the road ahead held many twists and shocking surprises. Including the day when Evangelos would face the ultimate fear as he gazed point-blank into a Luger’s barrel. MY FATHER HAD THIS LUGER … A True Story Of Hitler's Greece is an enthralling tale of the war that engulfed Europe and the world. A moving ode to the human capacity for hope and endurance, it paints a rich picture of wartime life and poignantly evokes a childhood that is as magical as it is terrifying. It is a story for today, and for all times and all ages.

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First they faced the guns of their enemies. And then the guns of their friends.
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On the eve of World War Two a small boy, Evangelos, leads an idyllic life with his family in a serene, tradition-governed community on the outskirts of Athens. Their serenity is shattered by a series of catastrophes beginning when Greece is invaded by the armed forces of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Astonishingly, the ill-equipped, outnumbered Greeks manage to repel the invasion, only to have Mussolini call in his ally, Adolf Hitler. Jackboots march through the ancient streets, the swastika flag rises over the Acropolis and German troops are stationed across the road from Evangelos’ house. After a long and bitter Occupation the Allies eventually arrive to replace the Germans, but their presence turns out to be shockingly different from the liberation that the besieged Greeks had expected.
Throughout it all, little Evangelos slips through the neighborhood like a mouse, always underfoot, watching events from the unique vantage point of an ever-present witness.
Gripping, frightening, poetic, humorous and compulsively readable, My Father Had This Luger … isn’t only a vivid picture of Europe at war and of a vanished world. It’s also an unforgettable portrait of soldiers, of civilians under fire, of heroism that achieves no public renown, of the transcendent and universal power of family, of compassion, of the extraordinary resources of ordinary people, of human endurance, laughter and the will to survive.
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