Silent Nights • 1914–1944
Across two world wars, Christmas brought a moment of pause — unofficial truces, carols drifting across no man's land, and letters home filled with longing for hearth and home. These letters capture the strange stillness of Christmas at war.
Written on Christmas Eve during one of the coldest winters of the war. Friedrich describes the unofficial ceasefire and the carols drifting across no man's land.
A German theology student writes to a woman he has never met — falling in love with her photograph during the Christmas Truce of 1914. The letter was found in his kit after he was killed.
On Christmas Eve 1944, with Budapest under siege and the Soviets approaching, Ilona wrote her 300th letter to her husband István — who never received a single one.
On Christmas Eve 1944, surrounded by Germans in the frozen foxholes of Bastogne, Private First Class Robert Giordano wrote to his wife Rose in Brooklyn. He was killed the next day. The letter was found frozen in his hand.