An Austrian POW in Wales

By Horst Jarka

A co-publication with Ariadne Press, Riverside, California.

The readers of Horst Jarka’s book with its puzzling title are in for surprises and remarkable insights when they are confronted with and treated to excerpts from his original journal—texts, drawings, letters, cards from home—and his later reflections on his experiences as a young 19-year-old Austrian from Vienna in 1944 and 1945, a naïve soldier in Hitler’s German army, the Wehrmacht. Captured on the Western Front shortly after arriving there, his story tells of an unexpected journey as a POW in Wales, where, introduced and encouraged by humane, literate, and critical thinking Welsh friends and mentors, his life changes in astounding and very positive ways.