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Submitted by: Ellis M. Goodman

An individual s life experiences often influence their character, personality, and behavior. Traumas in a person s life, at any age, can often have a much deeper impact. This is even more significant, when the trauma relates to war time experiences.

In BEAR ANY BURDEN, my Cold War Espionage Thriller set in Poland at the height of the Cold War in the 1980 s, I have tried to show how the traumas of World War II affected the personality and behavior of the three main characters.

Sir Alex Campbell had grown up knowing of his grandparent s emigration to Scotland from Poland to get away from the Pogroms, persecution, and poverty. He d been aware of anti-Semitism and even had casual experiences of this during his school days. In April 1945 at the age of nineteen as an officer in the British Intelligence Corps Army, he was at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp and saw for himself the horrors of the brutal Nazi death camps. A few weeks later while interrogating a captured German officer, he was attacked and wounded and then watched the officer, a Nazi fanatic, commit suicide before his eyes.

These traumatic events stayed with him over four decades, regularly causing him to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, as he relived those experiences.

As Sir Alex Campbell matured, he became a cool, calm, unemotional businessman who kept his inner feelings and fears to himself, an ideal personality to carry out little jobs for the British Secret Intelligence Services

Anna Kaluza was born in a Russian labor camp in 1940. The daughter of an aristocratic landowning family, she never knew her father, who joined his regiment as the Germans were invading Poland at the start of the Second World War and was never seen again. Although her mother loved her and made considerable sacrifices for her and her brother, Jan, she was not capable of showing warmth and affection to Anna, and continually reminded her of her aristocratic background and her expected behavior.

Anna grew up with a deep affection for her brother, three years her senior, who was her hero and role model. When she blossomed into a beautiful young woman, she found she was not attracted to her brother s friends, but sought the company of much older men, who filled the role unbeknownst to her of a father figure. Falling into a relationship with a man who was nearly twice her age, did not blossom into a full-blown affair but led her to her future husband, a handsome, womanizing airline captain, fourteen years her senior.

Despite warnings from her close friends, she threw herself into a wild love affair, which eventually led to marriage, which unfortunately, her husband could not sustain. Three years later, they divorced.

Naturally, she was wary of getting involved in similar relationships, but realized she could use her beauty and charms, to her personal benefit when need arose.

Anna was a beautiful, strong woman with an aristocratic bearing inherited from her mother, who found herself ideally suited to the challenges and excitement of the British Secret Service.

Eric Keller was a teenager when the Nazis marched into his hometown of Tarnow in September 1939. Over the next three years, he lived through the ever-increasing brutal occupation murder, mass killings, persecution, starvation, death and living in perpetual fear. When he escaped from Tarnow and joined the Resistance in the surrounding forest, he became adept at silently killing Germans with weapons, knives, or even his bear hands.

Having lost all of his family in the Holocaust, he moved to Warsaw at the end of the Second World War, and started a new life, studying at the University of Warsaw, hiding his Jewish background, and eventually marrying the daughter of prominent Catholic family. It was only after his two children were murdered by the Polish Government for their involvement in the Solidarity Movement, that he decided to to defect to the West with his wife. Having lost his wife during their escape, it was only then that he was able to reveal his true background and, for the first time in forty years, talk about his wartime experiences.

These three characters were thrown together as part of a British Secret Service plan to help Professor Eric Keller defect from Poland. They were, however, inexorably tied together through their wartime traumas, which shaped and dramatically influenced their characters and personalities.

About the Author: Ellis M. Goodman is a Chicago based businessman who came to the U.S. in 1982 from London England. He is the author of CORONA: THE INSIDE STORY OF AMERICA S #1 IMPORTED BEER, and has recently completed his Cold War Espionage Thriller Novel BEAR ANY BURDEN. To learn more about Ellis M. Goodman and BEAR ANY BURDEN, visit

Bear Any Burden

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