Alex Jankowski

Against All Odds: Never Throw Stones at Your Mother Alex Jankowski

This uplifting memoir is a compelling account of survival by a young boy during the time of chaos and uncertainty that was Europe during the years 1942 to 1956. Bruno's first cries competed with the eerie sound of air raid sirens as he is born in 1942. Separated from his mother, Edith, he becomes a refugee traveling with his grandmother, Helene, as they flee Danzig before the approaching Red Army. As a young child, he experiences the claustrophobia of bomb shelters, the nerve-racking sounds of exploding bombs and gun fire, the screams of the wounded, and the stench of death. For the starving refugees and retreating soldiers, soup kitchens represent a welcome sign of humanity. Bruno's mother served a short term as an SS guard at a concentration camp and ends up in the city of Hanover in Northern Germany. When the war came to a sudden end in April 1945, Germans learned what it meant to be conquered. Russian guards controlled the villages and Communist propaganda was expounded to children as young as kindergarteners. Bruno found a new home in Saxony in East Germany with a clean warm bed and the love and affection of his grandmother. But his happiness is short lived when his mother returns in 1947 to take him away to live with her and his stepfather. Bruno is abused at home and bullied at school. But Against All Odds, he survives and learns to become the man he wants to be. At seventy years old, Alex Jankowski wrote this book to make peace with the past. Though it's his memoir, the names have been changed. Publisher's website: http://sbpra.com/AlexJankowski