Author Description

"Jurgen Herbst's account of growing up in Nazi Germany from 1928 to 1948 is a boy's experience of anti-Semitism and militarism from the inside. It is also a tale of moral awakening."--BOOK JACKET. "Jurgen Herbst was a middle-class boy in a Lutheran family that saw value in Prussian military ideals and a mythic German past. He recalls his confusion as some of his classmates were no longer welcome at his school, and his consternation as he tried to reconcile what he learned from his favorite teachers and what was subsequently taught by their Nazi party replacements. His description of walking to school the morning after Kristallnacht is clear and chilling."--BOOK JACKET. "At age ten Herbst joined the Jungvolk and slowly became aware of the real nature of the National Socialist regime. The story of that evolution - a unique, insider's view of the Nazi youth movement - is inspired by young Jurgen's deep friendships with his fellow students and their dedication to a military code of personal honor and loyalty. His devotion to those young men allowed him to endure scorn and deprivation and to risk personal well-being, even life, in the face of a brutal evil that demanded unquestioning allegiance."--BOOK JACKET.