It only took 71 years, but several Christmas cards from World War II have finally reached their destination.

Stolen from a post office in December 1941, 86 WWII Christmas cards from Nazi soldiers stationed on the British island of Jersey were recovered by the Jersey Archive in 2006. Since then, historians have been working to translate and catalogue the holiday letters, finally delivering them to the families of the intended recipients in Germany.

intended recipient：接受者

"I think it's a wonderful story. There's just things that are talked about in the letters -- the German soldiers, what they concerned with in terms of their families, their loves, wishing people merry Christmas," Stuart Nicolle of the Jersey Archive told the BBC. "It's a wonderful tale."

in terms of：有關(guān)于……

One of the Christmas cards, yellowed with age, read:

My dearest Kate, I hope you haven't forgotten me. Christmas won't be so happy for me this year, because I am only happy when I am with you.

While it took weeks for the Jersey Archive to track down family members and obtain postal addresses for many of the cards, the first was finally delivered to a farm near Frankfurt this week.

track down：跟蹤；追查

"You don't really know what to feel," Engelbert Bergmann said after reading the letter addressed to his grandfather, according to The Local.

Out of 86 Christmas cards, nine more descendants of intended receipients have been located. However, not everyone is elated to receive the historic mail. Germany's Deutsche Post told The Local some of the holiday cards have been rejected by descendants of the intended recipients, likely because of the Nazi ties.

The load of mail containing the WWII Christmas cards, written by Nazi soldiers occupying the Channel Islands in 1941, was stolen by local youths in an act of rebellion against the occupation. An anonymous man returned the stack of cards to the Jersey Archive in 2006.

rebellion against：反抗

Recently, other WWII-era letters washed up on New Jersey's shore in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Katheleen Chaney, whose 14-year-old son Patrick found the love letters along a beach in Atlantic Highlands, also sought out the family of the woman who wrote them.

【新聞快訊】“烽火連三月，家書(shū)抵萬(wàn)金?！睂?duì)于因戰(zhàn)亂而相隔兩地的親人來(lái)說(shuō)，一封家書(shū)的分量是難以想象的。而一封遲來(lái)的家書(shū)，包含的滋味無(wú)疑會(huì)更加復(fù)雜而雋永。據(jù)美國(guó)《赫芬頓郵報(bào)》12月20日消息稱，多封來(lái)自“二戰(zhàn)”時(shí)期德國(guó)士兵的圣誕家書(shū)，穿過(guò)71年的風(fēng)霜雨雪，終于到達(dá)了目的地。報(bào)道稱，這86封圣誕賀卡在1941年的一場(chǎng)反抗行動(dòng)中從郵局失竊后，被保留于英國(guó)的澤西島，直到2006年，才被澤西檔案館的人員重新發(fā)現(xiàn)。自從那時(shí)起，歷史學(xué)家便開(kāi)始進(jìn)行這些信件的翻譯和編錄工作，最終將它們送達(dá)德國(guó)的收信人家中。

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