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Someday You Will Understand: My Father's Private World War II
Walter Wolff was the son of a Jewish merchant family that fled their German home when the Nazis came to power and took refuge in Brussels, Belgium. On the eve of the German invasion, in May 1940, the family began its second escape. Their sixteen-month odyssey took them through the chaos of battle in France and the dangers of living clandestinely as Jews in occupied territory, before they finally boarded the notorious freighter SS Navemar in Cadiz, Spain, to be among the last Jewish refugees admitted to the United States before Pearl Harbor.
Within two years of his arrival in the States, Walter was ready to take the fight back to the Nazis as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Trained for the Intelligence Corps at Camp Ritchie, he was sent first to Italy and then to Germany and Austria, where he interrogated POWs for potential prosecution as war criminals at Nuremburg. At the same time, on his travels in Europe he returned to the confiscated properties of his extended family, throwing out the occupiers and reclaiming ownership. Telling the rousing story of a Jewish boy who fled persecution and returned to prosecute the Nazi oppressors, Walter Wolff’s daughter Nina has reconstructed these events from family lore and her father’s own cache of more than 700 wartime letters and 200 photographs, which he revealed to her shortly before he died.
Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Within two years of his arrival in the States, Walter was ready to take the fight back to the Nazis as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Trained for the Intelligence Corps at Camp Ritchie, he was sent first to Italy and then to Germany and Austria, where he interrogated POWs for potential prosecution as war criminals at Nuremburg. At the same time, on his travels in Europe he returned to the confiscated properties of his extended family, throwing out the occupiers and reclaiming ownership. Telling the rousing story of a Jewish boy who fled persecution and returned to prosecute the Nazi oppressors, Walter Wolff’s daughter Nina has reconstructed these events from family lore and her father’s own cache of more than 700 wartime letters and 200 photographs, which he revealed to her shortly before he died.
Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
359 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 5, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 16, 2014
Great book. She took the information from her father and wrote this story on world war II.
November 3, 2025
"Someday You Will Understand" is about Nina Wolff Feld finding her father's letters after he dies. Talking about how he survived WW2 and grew throughout it. Taking you on a journey of how sometimes you can't share everything. But when the perfect time comes, it can make you view things in a completely different light. Showing how everyone has their demons, but it is how you face them that determines who you truly are. This story is a perfect example of how her father went through hell, but he came back changed and different. He wants to do good in his life rather than continuing this hatred. This is honestly a great book to read if you love reading non-fiction, or it can be the book that makes you secretly love non-fiction.
January 17, 2018
Someday You Will Understand..
I am quite interested in WW2, always have been. However, it took all I had to complete this book. Too much detail, and when I say that, I mean it seemed the book had more personal information about her father, (yawn,) that wasn't even that interesting, than the war itself. I'm all for personal recollections from the past, however this was too much. If the author didn't understand, (regarding the title) before she wrote this book, well????? I gave this book a 4 star rating because of the pictures.
I am quite interested in WW2, always have been. However, it took all I had to complete this book. Too much detail, and when I say that, I mean it seemed the book had more personal information about her father, (yawn,) that wasn't even that interesting, than the war itself. I'm all for personal recollections from the past, however this was too much. If the author didn't understand, (regarding the title) before she wrote this book, well????? I gave this book a 4 star rating because of the pictures.
February 8, 2022
Yikes- next time the author needs to hire a reader! Prosody lacking making for disjointed comprehension. Good angle on the post war hunt for war criminals and sorting out things in post war ravaged areas, from her fathers letters.
May 29, 2022
The author shares her father's world war 2 experiences, all the more interesting because he was a Jewish servicemember doing intelligence work. A plethora of war letters documents his unusual journey.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews