The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
My recent book Who Will Rescue Us? represents over ten years of historical research on a group of primarily Jewish children who fled Nazi Germany and Austria. The goals of my study were multiple: I wanted to grasp- to the extent possible- what it felt like to be a...
In 2003, Michael Admiraal and his father embarked on a road trip across Europe to visit eight concentration camps. Along the Roads to Hell is the legacy of this trip; an account of their experience and memories infused with historical fact. Admiraal begins by...
In WW2 Europe, escape routes for Jewish refugees were vanishing one by one. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kaunas in Lithuania became a haven for Jewish families fleeing the brutality of the Nazis. But that safety was short-lived. As the numbers needing to flee...
Michael, Along the Roads to Hell recounts the trip you took with your father to visit eight concentration camps across Europe. Why did you want to turn this experience into a book? In a way, the book could be seen as a monument for the special experience that I have...
Writing the history of one’s hometown is no small feat, even after living and studying its history for 25 years. Aachen became my home in October 1999, when I was invited to teach at RWTH-Aachen University during my PhD studies. The university was already an esteemed...
Books of 2023 from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyIt’s been a great year for fiction and non-fiction, but these books are my first amongst equals. Every Spy a Traitor by Alex Gerlis follows Agent Archie, a Russian mole in MI6 across...
Birds of Prey, by Philip W. Blood The Bialowieźa forest, in Poland and Belarus, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The forest is full of interesting plant life and a wide range of wildlife including wolves, wild boar, deer and European bison. No wonder then, that...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of Rising TideMunich Wolf, by Rory Clements is set in 1935 Munich. When the body of a young English socialite is found, Kripo detective Sebastian Wolff is called in to solve the politically sensitive case. The...
Philip W. Blood, Birds of Prey is an extraordinary piece of work using groundbreaking research to produce an original book on the Second World War. Not an easy feat. Was this a story you discovered, or one you always wanted to tell? The book is both a narrative I was...
How did the Ordinary German Soldier Behave During the War and the Holocaust? In 1997, I unearthed the war diaries of two Luftwaffe security battalions from the years 1942 to 1944. These diaries meticulously chronicled the battalion, company, platoon, and squad level...
