world war (1939-1945)

After the death of her father, who was a World War II United States Army surgeon, Leila Levinson discovered a concealed box of shocking photos he had taken of a Nazi slave-labor camp he had liberated. She learns that he suffered a breakdown after treating camp survivors. Searching for answers to her father's grief she sought out, and interviewed, dozens of World War II veterans who also liberated concentration camps. What she found is that the unimaginable horrors they witnessed still affected their daily lives.

In the summer of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg. For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs. The firestorm they created was visible for 200 miles, and pockets burned for a month. After the bombing, as the people of Hamburg emerged from their cellars and shelters, they were confronted with a vision of hell: a sea of flame, the burned-out husks of fire engines, roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac, and hurricane-force winds.