Liverpool Libraries held many WW2 sessions during the creation of the 大象传媒 WW2 People's War website.
In all over a hundred veterans and many hundreds of school children visited Central Library in William Brown Street, Liverpool. This was all part of the Their Past Your Future project funded through The Big Lottery Fund. The children were able to chat with the veterans and learned all about WW2 in an interactive and fun way. There was also an exhibition including local archives selected from the extensive Liverpool Record Office collection. (see below for more details) In addition National Museums Liverpool kindly made WW2 artifacts available for the children to handle and also to help to bring back some memories for the veterans. A quiz was very successfully used to bring old and young together and great fun was certainly had by all.
Staff from 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside also attended many of the sessions and interviewed people to capture their memories. Those stories can be found amongst the 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside 'A' Team postings on this website. 大象传媒 News Online for the North West also interviewed and featured John Fitzsimmons a Liverpool WW2 veteran who was held prisoner in a Japanese POW camp after surviving a sniper's bullet through his neck.
Featured below are some additional stories posted by Liverpool Library staff on behalf of the WW2 veterans.
Some of the veterans taking part in our People's War sessions were also contributors to a 1991 World War 2 Anthology published by Liverpool Libraries entitled Liverpool Women at War. Permission was given by some of the original authors to include their personal stories on the 大象传媒 People's War website.
Liverpool Libraries would like to thank everyone who took part in the WW2 sessions - too many people to name individually but with a special thanks to all the children and the WW2 veterans for helping to make the sessions so enjoyable. The feedback from teachers, children and the veterans was overwhelmingly positive. So much so that Liverpool Libraries are going to continue hosting WW2 sessions for the foreseeable future.
Well done to all involved. We hope you will enjoy the stories posted below.
If you would like to know more about how World War Two affected Liverpool and Merseyside the following information will be useful.
Liverpool Record Office and Local Studies Service at Liverpool Central Library, William Brown Street, L3 8EW, collects, preserves and makes available archives and printed material in all formats relating to all aspects of the City鈥檚 history. There are extensive collections dating from the 13th century onwards.
The collections include a good deal of primary and secondary sources relating to World War Two such as archive photographs, civil defence records, air raid reports, school log books, local newspapers and news cuttings, some diaries and scrapbooks, printed histories, and written and recorded memories.
Details of access can be found at
www.liverpool.gov.uk/archives
Images and background information can be found on the Mersey Gateway website at
www.mersey-gateway.org
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