Witness to the Storm: A Jewish Journey from Nazi Berlin to the 82nd Airborne, 1920–1945

“An extraordinary memoir” of fleeing the Nazis—and then returning to fight them (Konrad H. Jarausch, author of Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century).

On June 6, 1944, Werner T. Angress parachuted down from a C-47 into German-occupied France with the 82nd Airborne Division. Nine days later, he was captured behind enemy lines and became a prisoner of war. Eventually, he was freed by US forces, rejoined the fight, crossed Europe as a battlefield interrogator, and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp. He was an American soldier—but less than ten years before he had been an enthusiastically patriotic German-Jewish boy.

Rejected and threatened by the Nazi regime, the Angress family fled to Amsterdam to escape persecution and death, and young Angress then found his way to the United States. In Witness to the Storm, Angress weaves the spellbinding story of his life, including his escape from Germany, his new life in the United States, and his experiences in World War II. A testament to the power of perseverance and forgiveness, Witness to the Storm is the compelling tale of one man’s struggle to rescue the country that had betrayed him.

© 2019 Indiana University Press (Ebook): 9780253039163

Release date

Ebook: 1 May 2019