FREIWILLIG

Two war veterans give their accounts of their experiences in WWII in two fascinating stories that couldn't be more different from each other. Itzhak Markus was a Lieutenant in the British Army. As a member of the occupying forces in Germany after the Allied victory he saw some terrible things – mountains of corpses being shovelled with bulldozers into pits in the ground. Today there are only memorial plaques to remind people of the many dead that lie under the mound at Bergen-Belsen, but for Itzhak Markus what he witnessed had a lasting impact. "Of course we knew that there were extermination camps… But to hear about it and to see it – that is the difference between heaven and hell."

As a counterpoint to Itzhak's story there is that of Martin Dörr who was a Lieutenant in the German Artillery. For him it was the sight of the Warsaw Ghetto that led his world to collapse. Was this the just war that he had signed up for? Shortly after arriving in Warsaw he was severely injured and taken to the USA in American custody. These are two arresting stories from two thrilling characters who bear witness to their disturbing experiences of war.