∎ PDF Free Damned Strong Love The True Story of Willi G and Stefan K A Novel Lutz Van Dijk Elizabeth D Crawford 9780805037708 Books

Damned Strong Love The True Story of Willi G and Stefan K A Novel Lutz Van Dijk Elizabeth D Crawford 9780805037708 Books

Download As PDF : Damned Strong Love The True Story of Willi G and Stefan K A Novel Lutz Van Dijk Elizabeth D Crawford 9780805037708 Books

Damned Strong Love The True Story of Willi G and Stefan K A Novel Lutz Van Dijk Elizabeth D Crawford 9780805037708 Books

It an inspiring story of love and lost with history. I love this story more and more each time I read.


Tags : Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K. : A Novel [Lutz Van Dijk, Elizabeth D. Crawford] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A story of World War II describes the relationship between sixteen-year-old Stefan, a Pole whose brother was an active member of the Resistance,Lutz Van Dijk, Elizabeth D. Crawford,Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stefan K. : A Novel,Henry Holt & Co,0805037705,General,Europe;Fiction.,Gay men;Fiction.,World War, 1939-1945;Fiction.,Children: Young Adult (Gr. 10-12),Fiction,Gay men,Historical fiction,World War, 1939-1945,YOUNG ADULT FICTION,Young Adult Fiction General,Biographical fiction,Europe

Damned Strong Love The True Story of Willi G and Stefan K A Novel Lutz Van Dijk Elizabeth D Crawford 9780805037708 Books Reviews

Homosexual's hard life.

This book is one homosexual's autobiography.

The author is Pole.
He had the musical talent in the boyhood, going on to school to a music system school was decided.

However, it was a Nazis age at that time.
He ..the counterplan.. then fell in love with soldier Germany.
The soldier Germany went to the battlefield for a while.

Author in his teens still worried about the lover who went to the war fronts and sent a love letter to him.
It began further hardship for the author.

He experienced a human-right violation and a cruel persecution.
I worried by discrimination and the prejudice for other reasons though I was not a homosexual.

I knew homosexual's history.. fretted one's gizzard by this book.
However, the author wrote the book for the homosexual problem improvement.
As a result, it sympathized with his stoutness and strength.
The educational campaign by the author for homosexuality will acquire victory in the future.
Simply drawn characters who appear selfish and self-absorbed during the backdrop of a brutal and callous war where people were living in atrocious conditions and dying in heinous ways.
This book was amazing to read. While it wasn't very long, the story was gripping and I fell in love with the characters. While there are many holocaust stories out there, few are based on the same-sex relationships that were also torn apart. I feel like these people are often ignored or simply mentioned in passing. To find a true story as touching as this one was great. I just wish there was a happier ending...Such is life, I guess.
‘The Soul records only growth not time. This is why some people have such a great impact on our lives even though we only know them for a short time whereas others we’ve known a lifetime have no effect at all’. From Kung Fu.

This book is marketed as a gay autobiographical love story set in the Second World War in Poland. In some respects that is true but the context is more the micro effects of Paragraph 175 and 175A of the German Penal code which put homosexual activity – even of the mildest sort – on a par with sex with animals. In the law’s eyes they were the same thing.

Our narrator is Sefan K who is 16 years old when the story begins. He is handsome and bright and rather confused about himself as he has no feelings for girls and experiences a lot of deep shame and remorse about the feelings he has for his attractive older brother. It is with him that he has his first (harmless) sexual experience. In a staunchly conservative Catholic country such as Poland in the 1930s this was something to bother the conscience of any male. His brother wasn’t bothered as access to females was strictly off limits until marriage. Harmless self relief with other males was counted as nothing but for Stefan it meant a lot more.

When war was declared the effects of the German occupation were felt immediately. Schools were closed to Poles; his family was unceremoniously dumped out of their home and sent to a one room flat – a bit of a squeeze for 5 people. His father disappeared early on in the narrative to fight with the resistance but was sent to a forced labour camp in Germany. He is never mentioned again. Stefan’s brother joins the partisans and is suspicious of his brother who can pass as a German, gets a job in a theatre and can get work delivering bread – something he can’t do. We learn of the petty restrictions placed by the Nazi’s on everyday activities which rendered Poles foreigners in their own country.

Then all changes. He is followed one day by an attractive older German soldier in his mid-twenties named Willi G. Initially suspicious Stefan becomes besotted by the young man as he is the first person he can be open with about his feelings for men. It also becomes his first love – his first Great Love the memory of which was to consume the rest of his life. They keep their meetings as secret as possible but his brother still considers it as ‘fraternising with the enemy’. Willi G is from Vienna, Austria and was forcefully conscripted into the army at the barrel of a gun so he not completely at ease with the ideology that he is associated with and has to enforce. He comes from a wealthy cultured family.

They eventually find a small shed on the outskirts of the town which becomes their place. They have to be very careful because they had the SS on one side and the Polish partisans on the other – neither of which would hesitate to shoot them for collaborating with the enemy let alone what they were doing in the shed. Actually what goes on has a veil drawn over it but you get the hint that they did more than hold hands. The love nest was all rather basic, cold and inconvenient but love is blind (literally) and they live for a few months in this love bubble. Then the inevitable happens – Willi is deployed to the Eastern Front in a matter of days so the relationship came to an abrupt halt. Stefan is devastated and for a now 17 year old with little experience of life his world collapses.

Having heard nothing from Willi for months Stefan takes it into his own hands and writes a short love letter to him via the German central clearing house. He was very very naïve that the letter would reach him unread and uncensored by the authorities – but love is blind and young love even blinder (but the neighbours aren’t). The inevitable call from the Gestapo comes and the rest is fairly predictable. He followed the 15,000 or more gay Germans who were arrested and deported to Labour/concentration camps never to be seen again. [Fewer than 10 were known to be left alive in 2000].They were expendable labour and it was assumed that they would die or be killed doing the worst types of work imaginable – and of course they did. They were marked out by the Pink Triangle but Stefan makes no mention of having one as he was sent to a prison in Poland because of his age. He wasn’t expected to live either – but he did survive largely because of the kindness of an old Jewish man who became his mentor and showed him how to survive the system. His knowledge of German made him a valuable commodity to the Polish prison authorities and he landed a soft job in the office – which didn’t result in better food or lodging but got him out of the deadly manual labour which would have killed him.

He survived a long march to Germany with the other prisoners despite injuries and eventually was liberated by the Allied Forces. And there the story ends. In the appendix to the American edition –which I had – he writes that he settled in Western Europe but found his way back to Poland where he studied Economics but suffered because of his sexuality and could never progress. He depended on gay charities in the West to supplement his income to pay for his medication from injuries sustained from his prison experiences. No compensation was ever received from the German authorities. He never found out what happened to Willi or whether he ever survived the Eastern Front – most likely not. Consider the final scene from The Name of the Rose and you will have some idea of how the ending came across to me.

The book is easily read and can be finished in 3 or 4 hours at a normal pace {134 pages]. Some have complained that it lacks any emotional punch. I could agree with that but this is not a novel but the memoir of an old man writing to get some money to buy medication in a country that had tried to erase his sort off the map! It was also not written in English of course. It was translated from the Polish into German and then English (and possibly Dutch) so I imagine quite a lot got lost in the translation. Also it is used in Germany to teach school children about this part of their history so it couldn’t be too complicated or graphic. A worthwhile read which - in the hands of a novelist - could be a really great read. I refer you to the films Paragraph 175 (available on YouTube) and ‘A Love to Hide’ which cover the same theme.
It an inspiring story of love and lost with history. I love this story more and more each time I read.