Never Go Home

A Story of World War II's Affect on a Family

De: Matt Peller

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Nazi fighter planes roar overhead as just-married Konrad and Magdalena Butscher exit the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in southern Hungary. To evade the draft, they soon flee to live with his parents at their inn on the Danube River.
Everyone passes through and is welcomed: Nazi military officers, communist guerillas, smugglers of weapons, identity forgers, Danube Swabians, Serbians, Croatians, Romanians, Gypsies, Jews. Konrad struggles to separate the factions while he exchanges and conceals multiple currencies. Should he remain with his stubborn parents? Or escape to a safer future with his wife and baby? As Konrad agonizes, the Germans invade Hungary, and the Allies counterattack. Who will stay, who will run, and where can they go? After the war even the "peace" is violent amid post-war reprisals against ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe.
The Iron Curtain descends, and who will wind up on which side? From Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Konrad's extended family is engulfed and torn apart.
While some family members give in to evil, others resist. What is the responsibility of a witness to evil? Are we hard-wired to protect the members of our own tribe at the expense of others? How many compromises will Konrad make before fate finds him? Readers may not agree with everyone's choices, but will understand their determination to survive.