Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered

Luisa Lang Owen talks about her memoir, Casualty of War: A Childhood Remembered, published by Texas A. and M. University Press. She was interviewed by Mr. Owen about her experiences as described in her book, including her travel to the United States. At the end of World War II, Yugoslavia expelled ethnic Germans, who had lived in the Danube Valley for more than three hundred years. The villagers were relocated to camps, where they received little food or other necessities, were pressed into hard labor, and beaten by guards. Ms. Owen was nine years old in 1945, when she first arrived at a concentration camp. She watched as those around her succumbed to malnutrition, disease, and exposure. She says this occurrence of “ethnic cleansing” is not well documented, although it preceded the events in Bosnia and Kosovo by fifty years. After the interview, she answered audience members' questions. close