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：有关于……

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：跟踪；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.

【新闻快讯】“烽火连三月，家书抵万金。”对于因战乱而相隔两地的亲人来说，一封家书的分量是难以想象的。而一封迟来的家书，包含的滋味无疑会更加复杂而隽永。据美国《赫芬顿邮报》12月20日消息称，多封来自“二战”时期德国士兵的圣诞家书，穿过71年的风霜雨雪，终于到达了目的地。报道称，这86封圣诞贺卡在1941年的一场反抗行动中从邮局失窃后，被保留于英国的泽西岛，直到2006年，才被泽西档案馆的人员重新发现。自从那时起，历史学家便开始进行这些信件的翻译和编录工作，最终将它们送达德国的收信人家中。

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