It has been 75 years since World War II ended, and the conflict still feels like one of the most covered events of the century — from public-school curriculums to films, TV series and countless books. But every year, there are fewer and fewer people living who actually remember the war and what it cost us. And though certain stories from the war continue to be memorialized, others are marginalized or lost to history.
For 2020, At War and The Times’s Special Projects team are producing a series called “Beyond the World War II We Know,” highlighting lesser-known stories about the end of the war and its aftermath. We will publish stories that have mostly remained untold, featuring both the voices of our readers and original reporting. Last fall, we asked people who lived through the war or who had a loved one who lived through it — in the military, but also civilian survivors and those who dedicated their lives to stateside efforts — to send us their stories; we will be retelling them here over the next nine months. We’ll also bring you in-depth reports on topics ranging from the consequences of Japanese internment to the struggles of black soldiers returning stateside. And we will recount events from 1945 that shaped the postwar new world order.
If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll also find front pages of The Times beginning with Jan. 1, 1945 — when the war made headlines every single day.
This week, we initiate the project with two articles honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day. The first takes us back to 1939 — before the war officially began — and is written by Andrea N. Goldstein, a Navy veteran whose Jewish family escaped Germany just days before Hitler invaded Poland. Andrea’s grandmother Marianne spent the rest of her life recounting her family’s brush with the Nazis and her father’s brief detainment in Dachau.
We have also published a first-person account told to Jake Nevins, The Times Magazine’s editorial fellow. Celia Kener was 6 in 1941 when the Germans invaded Soviet-occupied Poland. The first days of the occupation, when she and her mother hid in a church steeple, left her with a crippling fear of cats that she never overcame.
We look forward to hearing from you as we look back at World War II and the events that shaped the world in 1945.