Review: LETTERS FROM DACHAU

Letters from Dachau: A father's witness of war, a daughter's dream of peace by Clarice Wilsey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Back in 2019 my sister and I, along with our husbands, took a European trip through Czech Republic, Germany, and Switzerland. At one point of the trip we decided to tour Dachau. It is not far from Munich and we drove there in our rental car, making a day of it. Of course, it was a a very emotional experience, so much so that my sister had to return to the car after the guided tour, while the rest of us continued walking the whole memorial without her. The horror of the place was so present. Yet there was also a hope about the place. The Germans had changed the Dachau Concentration Camp into a memorial site as a place where anyone can go to remember what horrors mankind can inflict on others. It is a place set aside to remind us to never do this again. At one point in the visit my husband snapped a photo of the famous (infamous) wrought iron gate with the inset words: ARBEIT MACHT FRET, "Work Sets You Free." During our visit my sister mentioned that her friend Bob Welch was working with a woman on a book about Dachau.

After returning from our trip my sister asked my husband, Don, if he would allow his photo of the Dachau entrance gate to be used on the cover of that book, this book. Of course he said yes. As it turned out, the author Clarice Wilsey decided to use a different photo, one taken when she was young with of her father. My husband's photo is included in the insert section. In fact, I came to read this book,Letters from Dachau, because of the photo. Bob Welch, the co-author, sent Don a complimentary copy with a note of thanks for the photo.

Unfortunately, the book was published and arrived at our house sometime in 2020. We all know what happened in 2020. Who wanted to read a book about some terrible event in human history when we were all living a terrible event in present time? We set the book aside and ignored until now, the summer of 2023. As I was cleaning out the book shelves, sorting and rearranging, I picked up Letters from Dachau and made the decision to read it finally.

Letters from Dachau us divided into five parts. The first part is called "David and Emily". It covers the early years of each of Clarice Wilsey's parents and their lives, their schooling, how they met, and their marriage. David was in medical school, Emily was a trained physical therapist. In their early years, they had to live apart because of his residency and her job. The second part, "War", covered David's enlistment in the Army where he served with a medical unit as an anesthetist (since he hadn't finished his school to me a doctor yet). The 116th Medical Battalion ended up providing medical support during the Battle of the Bulge, the bloody battle that went on for months during the winter of 1944/45. As that battle ended and so did the war in Europe, the 116th were assigned to help deal with the mess at Dachau. During this whole time David wrote letters home, over 300 of them. These letters form the backbone of the book. Part three describes the horrors of what the 116th found in Dachau and the attempts that were made to save as many prisoners as they could, but many of these prisoners died anyway from malnutrition, disease, or the experiments that the German's conducted on them. David's letters home turned very dark and he acknowledged that he was a changed person from the horrors he witnessed.

Part 4 is titled "Home". The physical war is over, but not the emotional one. David becomes a successful anesthesiologist moving his family to Spokane, Washington. He is well regarded in community for his volunteerism with scouts and at church, he is beloved by patients, and well regarded by his colleagues, but at home it is a different story. He is abusive to his wife and kids, exacting his ideas of perfectionism onto them and when they can't live up to his expectations he is abusive, both mentally and physically. Here the author goes into quite a bit of details about untreated PTSD, which wasn't even acknowledged as a problem in the 1940s. Men were sent off to war to kill other men, and then expected to return to civilized society and go back to 'business as usual.' A lot of money goes into training  but very little money is dedicated to caring veterans when they return from the war theater. Daivd Wilsey was a victim of the war and so was his family.

Oddly, or maybe not too oddly, David Wilsey never talked about his war experiences. Not until the 2000s did Clarice even learn about his involvement with the medical team at Dachau. This was several years after her fathers death. Later, after her mother's death, she and her siblings found the 300 letters. After reading them Clarice came to understand how deeply her father was changed by war and the PTSD caused by his experiences. In Part 5,  "A Daughter's Dream of Peace". Clarice talked about her decision to share about her father's war experiences AND how it affected him as a person. It was a tough decision because she didn't want it to seem like she was trying to get back at her father for all of his abuses. But also felt that it was important to tell the whole truth. Like the Dachau of today, she wanted her story, his story to be a cautionary tale, one concerned more with the future than covering up the shameful past.

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-Anne