Year 2015 is a year of celebration because of the fact, that it is 70 years ago since the ending of World War 2. On that occasion this Danish book has been translated into English. It is an insider story in line with The Diary of Anne Frank. The translator writes: My father, Jorgen Rytter (1923-2005), took notes when he was imprisoned in Germany, from 1943 and to the ending of World War 2. Unfortunately those precious notes disappeared when my parent´s house burned down to the ground in 1949. I was born in 1951, and in 1959 my father began to write from memory what he had been through, and I remember that he, many times, said to my mother, that the book wrote itself. It was meant to be written. It is a rare and horrendous story. He was 20 years of age when he got caught. He was a member of a resistance group situated in Aarhus in Denmark. Six persons from that group were tortured and killed by the Gestapo and the rest of the resistance group were sent to Germany as war prisoners, including my father. The year, 2014, I have spent a lot of time translating the Danish 1st Edition from 1960 into English. I really hope that I´ve caught the spirit as in the original Danish writing published by Gyldendal in Denmark 1960. Jorgen Rytter was a very young man in an utterly hopeless situation, but he survived. Read his story!
About the Author: Jorgen Rytter was born in Copenhagen Denmark 1923. He became a recognized visual artist in the late 1940´s. He got married in 1946 to a visual artist, Mirza Dyring Rytter, born 1926. They got four children: Maria, Rasmus, Peter, and Emanuel. The family moved to Spain some years in the middle of the 1950´s. Jorgen Rytter was through his entire life marked from the experiences in Germany as a war prisoner. Night sweats and heart problems followed him as a shadow until his death in February 2005, but he found his beloved one, my mother, and they remained married until his death. Jorgen Rytter has written three fictional books, one non-fictional (Autumn Crocus) and one in prose. Only one of those books can be read in English these days: Autumn Crocus -based on a true story. But be aware that an English translation was made in 1963 by Chatto & Windus and it has nothing to do with this publication. My father wrote the book in a remarkable present and past tense blend, which makes it a work of art, but the translation/interpretation from 1963 was written in past tense only which became the translator's version of this fine book. The last book, my father wrote, published in Denmark by Gyldendal 1999 and with the Danish title "Det siger sig selv" is a continuation of Autumn Crocus, "some fifty years later", and it's still not translated into English. /Rasmus Dyring Rytter www.rasmusrytter.com