Books in Witness to Ancient History series

Why did so many Afghan people leave their country to become refugees? What was it like to be a woman living in Afghanistan during the repressive Taliban rule? What was it like to be a witness to history? Step back to the time of the wars in Afghanistan and see history through the eyes of those who lived it. Discover what it was like to be a young Soviet soldier about to go to war in Afghanistan. Find out about life in the city of Kabul during the fighting of the early 1990s. Read about the importance of reconstructing the country so that the people can live peacefully without the constant threat of war.

Why did so many Afghan people leave their country to become refugees? What was it like to be a woman living in Afghanistan during the repressive Taliban rule? What was it like to be a witness to history? Step back to the time of the wars in Afghanistan and see history through the eyes of those who lived it. Discover what it was like to be a young Soviet soldier about to go to war in Afghanistan. Find out about life in the city of Kabul during the fighting of the early 1990s. Read about the importance of reconstructing the country so that the people can live peacefully without the constant threat of war.

On April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the Eighty-Ninth Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face-to-face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany.These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity: railroad cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and-perhaps most disturbing of all-the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes.Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often-overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts-including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections-Hell before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.