The “day after” of one of most fierce battles of the WW2. Spring 1944. Victor Sierra

Cassino: the "day after"

View of the University Library in Leuven  .The wall are standing but inside everything burned out including the roofs and once again hundreds of thousands of books.
Some 36 years earlier in august 1914 German troops set fire to the then centuries old library.Rare handwritings and 300000 books and 800 unique incunabula(=first fruits of the art of  printing) are destroyed.The building would be restored mainly with American funding only to burn again in 1940.

University Library burned out

Castelforte, Central Italy, Southern Latium’s Apennines, May 1944. An aged Italian woman and three kids (his grandson?) after the homecoming on this little town, today on Province of Latina, which during nine months was involved in the fierce combats around the Gustav Line. Victor Sierra