Eyes are Watching, Ears are Listening: Growing up in Nazi Germany 1933-1946 Paperback – Illustrated, February 10, 2008

This book ought to be read and studied by anyone interested in the history as well as life and times of all the people living during WW II. It is distressing to me to personally see and talk to many German people who still feel the shame of what the Nazi party did to the whole continent of Europe and Russia as well as numerous nations and their people, people of different religions, and cultures. This book clearly describes what a child saw during the Hitler years and the awful savage acts performed in the name of an insane leader and political party. The German people born after 1920 are not to be held accountable for what had happen in Germany from 1933 to 1945. I love the innocence of the author and the short but clear description of what the author was experiencing. She does, however, describe very little about the horrors and Holocaust suffered by the German people during and after the war, The list of crimes against the German people have never been written or given much publicity. You ask, what crimes? Search your history books and released archives from the Previous Soviet Union and the Allies and you will find brutal murder of surrendering soldiers, innocent women, elderly and children. Starvation, wholesale theft of land and the unspeakable murder and death of displaced Germans from lands and countries they have possessed for centuries. Thanks to a murderous Stalin, incompetent Churchill, and senile as well as communist inspired Roosevelt, the German Holocaust was planned for and executed thoroughly by the Allies. I am glad that the author's family all survived and were all to begin again. The book, "Savage Continent" ought to be read by anyone who thinks their people of Non German origin were the only ones brutalized. Let justice arise and recognize the horrible outcome of Germany and planned evil synthesized by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt and his communist staff. The truth shall be shouted from the rooftops.

I have just finished this touching book, and feel that it deserves the 5 star rating. Having always been curious about the German people during WWII, and why they appeared so indifferent to the plight of the Jews, are questions that were answered by reading firsthand, what the author and her family lived through during these most difficult and terrifying years. In fact, I believe that if someone wants to know what it was like for good German people,(and there were many), who wanted to do what was right for their fellow German Jews, they should read this book, as the author explains how Hitler made them fear for their lives by even saying the wrong words against the Nazi policies. Eycke, the author, is a sweet, caring, child, who learns from two very special parents, that one must be strong, and try to help as many people, in as many ways as she can. She, along with her siblings, must face some very tough situations during these years, not to mention the constant worry over whether the family would have food to eat, each and every day. Eycke's Dad, did in fact, risk his life and that of his family's, when he rescued many Jews from Auschwitz, while they lived in Poland. He did this in spite of being very nearly arrested himself, on many occasions. For me, this book put everything in perspective, and it really provided a good look into what the time period was like, and the immense struggles the Germans and Poles went through just to be able to live another day, before and especially after, the war. It makes me wonder if I would have had the strength, endurance, and especially, the courage, to do what they did.

Boring, ..slow moving material that drags along endlessly with mundane recitations of songs, poems, and recipes all written in German that often consumes three, or more pages. The book also reads like a novel that rarely addresses the implied setting of life in Nazi Germany. The family spent much of the war period in Poland with a noble father that is constantly opposing the Nazis in his work as an architect. This father wantonly succeeds in thrashing the sinister plans of the diabolical, fumbling fascists until he is serendipitously warned of gestapo agents casually coming to arrest him. Then he brilliantly bamboozles the bumbling fools over a cup of coffee with a quickly acquired letter of induction to the Wehrmacht that saves him from prosecution. He then continues to save the Jewish people around him wherever he goes. Very few actual details are ever given about these "rescues", or very much other information about his actual involvement in the war. But there is a massive amount of rambling about domestic issues, how attractive her father was, beautiful buildings, and, of course, the impending arrival of the Russians near the war's end. The Russians never really make an appearance in this book; the family is able to get train passage all the way to the American zone by a series of good fortunes that are really nothing more than just getting on the train before it leaves in each town. I kinda doubt that the author was really there during the war.I wonder if there were really ANY adults in Germany that supported the Nazi Regime? So many "actual accounts" that are written seem to always have parents that completely opposed the government they elected in 1933. Surely some of those thousands of people at the rallies at the sports arenas so often depicted in videos/documentaries had relatives that write, ..wouldn't you think?I recommend "Angels in the Darkness", "Weeds Like Us", "Abandoned Innocence Lost: A true story of a young German girls surviving the horror of the Russian advance westward in the last months of world war two. From peace as an evacuee to survival as refugee.Angels in the Darkness: A Family's Triumph over Hitler and World War II Berlin: 1935-1949Abandoned and Forgotten: An Orphan Girl's Tale of Survival During World War IIWeeds Like Us  and Forgotten", and "Innocence Lost" for really believable actual accounts of life during this period.

i did not expect this to be such a vivid tale of a family in wartime germanywell worth the read if that period in european history attracts you..