Overview

After a U.S. Army doctor, David Wilsey, helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in the spring of 1945, he worried he might never be the same. He was right. After his death, a daughter, Clarice Wilsey, found a box of letters and photos in the attic that stunned her. In a heartfelt memoir, Wilsey writes of Dachau, war, and the heroic man she never knew.

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9781734662504

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Letters from Dachau is an important addition to the literature of World War II liberation. Clarice Wilsey gives us a deeply personal account that bravely reveals the human tragedy that was the Holocaust. Through her father's letters, she shares with startling openness the deepest thoughts of a man plunged into one of the world's most horrific crimes. Wilsey reflects on this crucial history as a daughter raised in the shadow of trauma. Dee Simon Baral Family Executive Director, Holocaust Center for Humanity, Seattle What the courageous doctor could not achieve in a lifetime--speak about the unspeakable--his daughter has done in these pages. In this most original and vivid pulling back of the covers at the wartime bedside, Clarice Wilsey has revealed her father's deep empathy, his capacity to improvise, and his deft skill under fire, all while she explores the tragic cost to his own well-being. Clarice has given her father's service a voice where there was none, a memoir only she could assemble from his rediscovered letters, and a purpose only her hindsight could bestow upon his legacy. Ted Barris author, rush to danger: medics in the line of fire This book is magnificent--powerful, riveting, and remarkably well-researched. The chapters on Dachau are painful to read, of course, particularly because the author chose--wisely, necessarily--to include many of the graphic scenes and accounts her father wrote in his letters to her mom. Wilsey describes people at their best, their worst, their most noble, their most craven. She pulls no punches; war ain't pretty. Her father is depicted as a brilliant man utterly traumatized by his war-time experiences. Wilsey makes it clear that war doesn't end when the last gun is fired--but, rather, its effects extend to human beings for generations afterward. It is not beach reading; it is dense with factual material, psychological perplexities, both war time and domestic conflicts, and issues occasioned by her father's unique personality. I am deeply, deeply impressed. Elizabeth hull Political science professor, Rutgers University

"Letters from Dachau is an important addition to the literature of World War II liberation. Clarice Wilsey gives us a deeply personal account that bravely reveals the human tragedy that was the Holocaust. Through her father's letters, she shares with startling openness the deepest thoughts of a man plunged into one of the world's most horrific crimes. Wilsey reflects on this crucial history as a daughter raised in the shadow of trauma. Dee Simon Baral Family Executive Director, Holocaust Center for Humanity, Seattle What the courageous doctor could not achieve in a lifetime--speak about the unspeakable--his daughter has done in these pages. In this most original and vivid pulling back of the covers at the wartime bedside, Clarice Wilsey has revealed her father's deep empathy, his capacity to improvise, and his deft skill under fire, all while she explores the tragic cost to his own well-being. Clarice has given her father's service a voice where there was none, a memoir only she could assemble from his rediscovered letters, and a purpose only her hindsight could bestow upon his legacy."" Ted Barris author, ""rush to danger: medics in the line of fire"" This book is magnificent--powerful, riveting, and remarkably well-researched. The chapters on Dachau are painful to read, of course, particularly because the author chose--wisely, necessarily--to include many of the graphic scenes and accounts her father wrote in his letters to her mom. Wilsey describes people at their best, their worst, their most noble, their most craven. She pulls no punches; war ain't pretty. Her father is depicted as a brilliant man utterly traumatized by his war-time experiences. Wilsey makes it clear that war doesn't end when the last gun is fired--but, rather, its effects extend to human beings for generations afterward. It is not beach reading; it is dense with factual material, psychological perplexities, both war time and domestic conflicts, and issues occasioned by her father's unique personality. I am deeply, deeply impressed. Elizabeth hull Political science professor, Rutgers University"

Author Information

"CLARICE WILSEY, former associate director and counselor at the University of Oregon Career Center, speaks nationwide on the Holocaust. She served as dean of students at St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa. In her 45-year career as a university administrator, Wilsey won three major awards, including the Miltner Award as Administrator of the Year at the University of Portland. She lives in Eugene. Bob Welch is the author of more than two dozen books, including ""The Wizard of Foz: Dick Fosbury's One-Man High-Jump Revolution,"" chosen by the Track & Field Writers of America as the 2019 Book of the Year, and ""American Nightingale,"" an Oregon Book Award finalist and featured on ABC's ""Good Morning America."" He is a two-time winner of the National Society of Newspaper Columnist's ""best writing"" award. He was an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Oregon and spent fourteen years as a general columnist at The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon. He speaks nationally on ""pebble in the Water"" themes."

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