No Heil Hitler

Winner of the National Seniors Literary Prize (Australia) and the Philpott Prize. “I saw the flicker of flames as the first plane fired its guns and heard the trees above my head splintering as the stream of bullets hit them. Branches toppled down. Cattle panicked. The ricocheting bullets whined around the valley.” On September 1, 1939, ten-year-old Paul Cieslar’s peaceful childhood in the Polish countryside came to an end. German fighter planes roared overhead, and with them came the invasion o