Survival, spies and justice
Wells Festival of Literature this year plays its part in commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War with gripping accounts from two authors of survival and espionage.
A third writer brings a current message of hope in the battle for justice and holding war criminals to account.
Historian Anne Sebba, in her book The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, tells the harrowing tale of a 50-strong orchestra of women and young girls forced to play for their lives in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In this extraordinary story of survival she asks how did they find the strength to play the notes for the perpetrators of genocide, and what place does music have in a death camp?
An intriguing spy story unfolds in The Spy and the Devil by Tim Willasey-Wilsey. The former Foreign Office diplomat tells the long-concealed tale of Baron de Ropp, who was MI6’s top secret agent in Nazi Germany from 1931 to 1939.
The agent had direct access to Hitler and this riveting account of espionage and intrigue conveys the impact of one man’s secret mission on the course of history.
On the theme of international justice, human rights worker Steve Crawshaw writes that hope and positivity is to be had despite the fact that we are regularly bludgeoned by reports of war atrocities.
In Prosecuting the Powerful: War Crimes and the Battle for Justice he says that international law is at last being taken seriously so those responsible will be held to account.
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