Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More

A fourteen-year-old boy witnesses the upheavals, tragedies and displacement sweeping central Europe right after World War II. The action centers on the Sudetenland, where the native German-speaking population was uprooted and forced into exile by the Czech goverment at the end of the war. The Sudetenland, a former province of Austria which had been given to newly formed Czechoslovakia by the Allies at the end of World War I, was annexed in 1938 to Germany by Hitler before he occupied all of Czechoslovakia. The territory was returned to Czechoslovakia by the victorious Allies in May 1945. Sudden mass expulsions of the native German-speaking population by the new Czechoslovak government began soon after. From occupation by the Russians to dispossession and displacement by a new Czech government, and the tragic loss of his father and older brother, Dr. Helfert relays the history of his family and country during the tumultuous years just after World War II.