The Day the Nazis Came by Stephen R Matthews is released today on audiobook, narrated by me for Bonnier Books and available to download from Audible (click here).
Summary
By the time he was six years old, Stephen Matthews had been bombarded by the Luftwaffe and deported from occupied Guernsey along with his family to a prison camp in the heart of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. He had seen men die in front of him and walked with Jews straight off the cattle-trucks from Bergen-Belsen. He had nearly drowned, been menaced by Alsatian guard dogs, beaten by a member of the SS, stranded in a minefield and had his hand broken by a German guard for attempting to feed Russian prisoners.
The family kept going through imprisonment, held together by their will to survive and their love for each other. But the island home they eventually returned to had been scarred and stricken by Nazi occupation.
The Day the Nazis Came is an utterly unique memoir, depicting the world of Nazi prison camps through the eyes of a child - a world in which the real dangers often seemed trivial and every day was a new adventure. Above all, it pays tribute to the preciousness of hope and shows that human kindness may flower in the unlikeliest of places.