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    Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia
    Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia
    Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia

    By H. R. R. Furmanski

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    About this ebook

    Originally published in 1960, this compact book tells the true story of a German soldier: from his early childhood during the First World War, through to his harrowing experiences on the frontline during the Word War II, culminating in his capture by the Red Army on 20 December 1942…

    An astonishing first-hand account.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerdun Press
    Release dateFeb 7, 2017
    ISBN9781787204010
    Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia
    Author

    H. R. R. Furmanski

    H. R. R. Furmanski was born in East Prussia in January 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I. His parents owned a bakeshop, which his mother continued to run whilst his father was sent to war for four years. Although Furmanski dreamed of becoming a doctor, and was sent to a prestigious German high school, he ended up, reluctantly, following in his father’s footsteps and became a master baker. As World War II approached, his father joined the Nazi party—something which Furmanski himself was against doing himself. Invariably called upon to serve in the German Army, he was once again not granted his wish by his father to defer the order to serve, and joined the military in 1939. In April 1942, he was ordered to the front, and captured by the Russian Army in December that same year. He would go on to recount the traumatic events he and his family lived through during this difficult time in his brief 1960 autobiography, Life Can Be Cruel: The Story of a German P.O.W. in Russia. Unable to resume his life in his native Germany after the end of the war, Furmanski decided to free himself from his painful past and immigrated to the United States in the 1950s.

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    • 5/5
      Showed the strength of one person to survive war and it's aftermath.
      Glad to see him survive and come to America..

    Book preview

    Life Can Be Cruel - H. R. R. Furmanski

    This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com

    To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books—picklepublishing@gmail.com

    Or on Facebook

    Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

    © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

    Publisher’s Note

    Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

    We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

    LIFE CAN BE CRUEL

    BY

    H. R. R. FURMANSKI

    First Edition

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Contents

    TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

    DEDICATION 4

    LIFE CAN BE CRUEL 5

    REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 35

    DEDICATION

    My thanks to Rebecca Bloomfield

    for encouraging me

    to write this book

    LIFE CAN BE CRUEL

    I was born in a small town in East Prussia, on a bitter cold night in January. The year was 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I. My parents were very happy and proud that their second child was a boy. At last, thought Papa, I will have a male heir who can carry on the business and keep alive the family tradition. In his mind he was already planning my future. With fatherly pride he bent to kiss my mother and thank her for giving him a son. It had been a long time between children—thirteen years—and although Papa loved my sister Frieda and gave her the best which he was able to provide, still, she was only a girl, and a girl did not share the pride of her father’s profession in those days, nor did she hold the promise of a new and more prosperous generation that would bear the family name. All of this was important to Papa, who was a proud, strong-willed man, a master pastry chef who took pride in his craft.

    His mouth was a firm line separating a determined chin and a carefully trimmed black mustache. I cannot recall those set features ever changing, nor the mustache being any color but a shiny, bristly black, though I know that, as he grew older, his face became lined, and his hair turned gray.

    I do not mean to imply that Papa was a vain man. No, he simply took a craftsman’s pride in his work, and he found in the prospect of a son to follow him a new energy, a new incentive—and he worked doubly hard. His well-established pastry shop flourished and prospered under his constant supervision and his contagious, driving spirit.

    No matter how loudly or how often the bell on the shop-door rang, Papa’s voice could be heard throughout the kitchen. No matter how thickly the dust of flour filled the air, Papa’s quick, deep eyes mirrored his mood—an occasional displeasure or, more often, the deep pleasure experienced by a man who has given of his best and whose work has met with approval.

    And so, with the birth of a son into the family, business seemed to thrive to an even greater extent. New customers flocked to the bakery, and soon the kitchens were expanded and modernized. The cash register played a merry tune, and life was full for my papa. And yet, it is not Papa whom I remember most clearly. When I think of the shop and the counter that sat spotlessly clean before the customers, and the wonderful smells that came from the lovely products of my father’s art, I see Mother. Mother—I never called her Mama or Mummy or Ma. These words were just sounds to me—empty terms of endearment that any child could push from between baby lips to call any woman who was kind to him or gave him pretty things. But Mother was more than a word or a woman who showed me great kindness: she wove her soul into mine with careful, firm stitches that formed patterns of goodness and love, comfort and security, understanding and peace. I cannot tell now where her soul ended and mine began.

    Looking back in memory, I see her in the shop as a slender, blond woman with deep blue eyes. I remember the smile that seemed never to leave her lips, and the happy words that were always on her tongue as she waited on friends and strangers in the store. I remember how she would come to me in her free moments from the shop, wearing her apron, the warm smell of baked goods clinging to her person. And I remember how she prayed with me and for me, through all the busy days between shop and home, through all the painful days of childhood sickness and shattered dreams, through all the blackened days when war sounds drowned her words to my ears. At no time was I unaware of her presence.

    My first year was therefore spent in a wonderfully peaceful and secure atmosphere. We had enough on which to live, enough room in which to be happy, and enough love shared among us to teach us to love life. Never were strong words or quarrels heard

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