Personal Stories

Letters, diaries, testimonies, and memoirs — the human voice of the war preserved in words. These are the intimate accounts of people who lived through history, writing what they felt while they felt it.

Showing 7 stories

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LETTER

The Last Letter from Oradour-sur-Glane

Mathieu Borie • June 10, 1944 • Oradour-sur-Glane, France

Massacre committed by SS Division Das Reich as reprisal for Resistance activity. The village was entirely destroyed, with men shot in barns and women/children burned in the church.

"My dearest Geneviève, I write this from the church of Oradour where we have been gathered with all the village. The soldiers say it is for an identity check, but something is wrong. I see fear in their eyes, the kind of fear that comes before viole..."
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DIARY

Field Surgeon's Diary: Omaha Beach

Major Charles W. Smith, MD • June 7-18, 1944 • Omaha Beach, Normandy

Diary entries from a frontline surgical hospital established on Omaha Beach immediately after the landings. Most field hospitals were not established until D+3 due to the heavy fighting.

"D-Day + 1 I operated for 22 hours yesterday. This morning I find I cannot remember the faces of the men I saved, only the ones I could not. We have no plasma left. The blood is caked on my surgical gloves, flaking off like rust. I cannot get it wet ..."
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TESTIMONY

Warsaw Uprising Radio Operator's Log

Krystyna Krahelska "Danuta" • August-September 1944 • Warsaw, Poland

Radio transmissions from the Warsaw Uprising, August-October 1944. The uprising was the largest resistance operation of WWII, involving 50,000 Polish fighters against German forces.

"We broadcast from the fourth floor of the Post Office building on Świętokrzyska Street. The Germans know our location—they have shelled us three times today—but the antenna still stands. I am reading the news at 1400 hours daily, and I can hear..."
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TESTIMONY

Testimony of a Liberator: Buchenwald

Private First Class William J. Aalund • April 11, 1945 • Weimar, Germany

Firsthand account of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp by American forces. Buchenwald was the first major camp liberated by the Western Allies.

"April 11, 1945. We didn't know what it was. The Third Army had been moving fast, and we were just following the tanks. Someone said it was a POW camp, but it wasn't like any POW camp I'd ever heard of. The smell hit us half a mile away. I thought it..."
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LETTER

Letter from a German POW: American Friend

Friedrich "Fritz" Mueller • 1965 (recalling 1945-1947) • Camp Huntsville, Texas / Hamburg, Germany

Letter from a German POW who was held in a U.S. detention camp in Texas, 1945-1947. German POWs in American camps often developed close relationships with guards and local communities.

"Dear Bill, It is strange to write to you like this, when the last time we spoke you were guarding me with a rifle. But I have thought of you often these twenty years. You were kind to me in the camp in Texas, when others were not. You brought me cig..."
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MEMOIR

Dresden Firestorm: A Survivor's Account

Lieselotte Schmidt • February 13-15, 1945 • Dresden, Germany

Account of the Allied bombing of Dresden, February 13-15, 1945. The attack created a firestorm that destroyed the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 people, though Nazi propaganda inflated this number.

"I was nineteen years old on the night of February 13, 1945. I lived in Johannstadt, near the Great Garden. I remember the air raid sirens at 21:51. We had heard sirens many times before—Dresden was safe, they said, there were no factories here, onl..."
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DIARY

Resistance Diary: Norwegian Teacher

Anne-Cath Vestly • December 1941 - November 1942 • Oslo/Grini, Norway

The Norwegian Teachers' Resistance of 1942 was a unique civil disobedience movement where nearly half of Norway's 14,000 teachers refused to join the Nazi Teachers' League. 1,100 were arrested and 500 sent to Arctic labor camps.

"They came for the teachers today. The Quisling government has ordered that all teachers must register with the Nazi 'Teachers' League' and teach the curriculum of the New Order. I will not. December 5, 1941 We have organized. Half the teachers in O..."
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