Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II
by Svetlana Alexievich
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"Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Svetlana Alexievich's collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. These men and women were both witnesses and sometimes soldiers as well, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded in them--a trauma that would forever change the course of the Russian nation. This is a new version of the war we're so familiar with. Alexievich gives voice to those whose show more stories are lost in the official narratives, creating a powerful alternative history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Collectively, these voices provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human consequences of the war"-- show lessTags
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If you ever get in the doldrums and sit around feeling sorry for yourself about one First World problem or another, read this book to give you a better perspective of what it means to lose so so much. Heartbreaking doesn't begin to cover it. I listened to the audio and it was just excellent as the narrators took the parts of different Russians who survived the war when they were children. Barely.
It's not the first time I've read about people consuming their pets because they were in a state of starvation (see City of Thieves) but it is the first time I've heard actual first person descriptions of it. The children in the narration were aged from about four to early teens during the war. But believe me, they had no childhood; they were show more all adults regardless of their age because the horrific events they lived through took away any semblance of childhood.
This is a good book to keep in mind as we watch video footage of the innumerable war situations all over the world and consider the suffering of the children, especially the children. show less
It's not the first time I've read about people consuming their pets because they were in a state of starvation (see City of Thieves) but it is the first time I've heard actual first person descriptions of it. The children in the narration were aged from about four to early teens during the war. But believe me, they had no childhood; they were show more all adults regardless of their age because the horrific events they lived through took away any semblance of childhood.
This is a good book to keep in mind as we watch video footage of the innumerable war situations all over the world and consider the suffering of the children, especially the children. show less
Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich.
I read the English language version.
Having read all of her other books I was naturally drawn to this. Her forté is to collate first hand verbatim accounts. In this case it was recollections of Russian people who were children when war began.
There are no sanitised images here. Within 30 pages I had tears running down my face. What kind of creatures are we that subject children to experiences such as those recorded here? As a parent how could I imagine watching my child being driven away or worse, left alone while I was dragged away. How could I imagine spending months looking for my children without knowing if they were even alive.
You must read this book. it will cure you of any rational thoughts show more about war and its consequences. show less
I read the English language version.
Having read all of her other books I was naturally drawn to this. Her forté is to collate first hand verbatim accounts. In this case it was recollections of Russian people who were children when war began.
There are no sanitised images here. Within 30 pages I had tears running down my face. What kind of creatures are we that subject children to experiences such as those recorded here? As a parent how could I imagine watching my child being driven away or worse, left alone while I was dragged away. How could I imagine spending months looking for my children without knowing if they were even alive.
You must read this book. it will cure you of any rational thoughts show more about war and its consequences. show less
Some years ago, American writer Alice Walker wrote a picture book entitled “Why War Is Never a Good Idea”. More than anything else I have read, Svetlana Alexievich’s book shows why. It contains testimonies of those who were traumatically impacted as children by the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the war that continued there until 1944. Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls the stretch of earth where Alexievich’s “last witnesses” were born—an area which extends from central Poland to western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states—“the bloodlands” and for good reason. He writes that “mass violence of a sort never before seen in history was visited on this region.” People tend to show more think the horror of the twentieth century is located in the concentration camps, Snyder observes, but the camps are not where most of the victims died; the bloodlands are. Alexievich’s interviewees are for the most part Belarusians. Their childhood memories, which the author apparently collected, recorded, and shaped between 1978 and 2004, bear witness to the intense human and animal suffering in this part of eastern Europe as a direct result of Hitler’s aspirations and depravity. For Stalin’s genocidal acts and crimes against humanity, you will need to read another book.
I concurrently read ARCs of the adult and the more recent young adult editions of Last Witnesses (translated from the Russian) but my remarks will focus mostly on the latter. I was interested to see how a book, which provides first-hand accounts of wartime experiences and atrocities, would be altered for younger people. Not as much as you might think, it turns out. True, the young people’s version is shorter by about a third, containing only 65 of the original 100 accounts, a few of them with significant edits. Since the book is a collection of memories from some who were as young as two years of age in 1941 (when the Soviet-German War began), many of the recollections are understandably fragmentary. Editors of the young people’s version seem to have rejected a few of the original pieces because they are fractured and confusing, but it’s evident that more of them were excluded because of graphic content.One story that was cut concerns a young girl whose family survived famine during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad by eating beloved family pets. A couple of stories focus on the Germans’ fattening up of captive, pretty, blond children under the age of five in order to use them to transfuse wounded German soldiers. Nazi doctors apparently believed the blood of the very young promoted healing. The children whose blood was repeatedly taken almost always died. Other excluded stories tell of the Nazis’ sexual assault of girls and women, physical abuse and torture of children, and cruelty towards animals. Eyewitness accounts of the punitive/death-squad murders of Jews, local communists, POWs, and relatives of partisan fighters have also been omitted. Germans regularly compelled victims to dig the pits they would fall into when executed. They forced villagers and family members to watch. Any crying by witnesses meant that they too would be shot. Carried out by the notorious Einsatzgruppen, this was “the Holocaust by bullets” that preceded the construction of the Nazi death camps in Poland.
While the young adult edition of Last Witnesses has fewer survivor accounts than the original, it does have additional special features to make the material accessible. First of all, there’s an introduction, which provides basic information about the founding of the Soviet Union and the terror Stalin inflicted on his own people prior to World War II: the mass killings, including political and military purges that weakened the Red Army; the policies that led to deliberate, genocidal famine; and the creation of the gulag network. An overview of Hitler’s goals is also presented. Early in World War II, the Führer had agreed to leave the Soviet Union alone in exchange for the western half of Poland, but, buoyed by victories in western Europe, he changed his mind and invaded the USSR after all. The land was rich in natural resources—oil and minerals; the soil was suitable for agriculture; and, besides, only communists and racially inferior humans—Slavs and most of Europe’s Jews—lived there. A brief summary of the war itself—a war in which German “criminality against civilians . . . was pushed to an extreme”—follows. The introduction refers the reader to a map of eastern Europe, which includes the major cities mentioned in the witnesses’ recorded oral histories. Unfortunately, this essential component was lacking in both advanced reader copies. It’s not clear if the adult version was to include one at all, but I can’t imagine reading either edition without a map to show the vast distances child evacuees travelled (with other, unrelated children or with family members), usually in squalid cattle cars. Footnotes and a useful fifty-word glossary are also provided. The latter explains many words, terms, and events a younger audience might be unfamiliar with, as well as a few that adults might appreciate, too: “Boletus”, “katiushas”, and “quitrent”, for example, were words unknown to me.
Alexievich’s witnesses, even the youngest, recall the arrival of the Germans in June 1941. As children, they saw and heard the planes strafing the trains that were carrying them away from the fighting: to orphanages or settlements in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, or Siberia—and elsewhere. Others describe the bombing of their villages, the arrival of black trucks, black motorcycles, and black-uniformed interrogation squads, carrying lists and going door to door to flush out the families of partisan fighters. Up close, the Germans looked surprisingly “ordinary”: handsome, strong, and healthy. Many witnesses comment they had difficulty reconciling these laughing, joking, harmonica-playing youths with the heinous acts they committed.
Submachine gun fire from low-flying aircraft often killed parents as they fled cottages with their young. These were often the children’s first encounters with death, something most would grow used to. Families often ran into forests, sometimes to live among the partisans; other family groups travelled along roads, pushing or pulling carts with food and a few possessions. They made easy targets for the enemy overhead. Grandparents figure prominently in many accounts—rescuing children and small animals the children were attached to, chicks and kittens—but strangers played significant roles as well. Belarusian peasants commonly took in wandering or orphaned children, housed as many as six refugee families in a single dwelling, and despaired when they lacked food for those who were starving. In eastern European peasant communities, unrelated elders were often addressed as grandfather, grandmother, uncle, or aunt. During these dark times, they stepped in as though they really were blood relatives, putting their own lives at risk in order to shelter Jewish and partisan children.
The Germans regularly burned the Belarusian villages they entered. According to the Smithsonian Magazine online, “By one historian’s count, occupying forces murdered all the inhabitants of 629 razed Belarusian villages, in addition to burning down another 5,454 villages and killing at least a portion of their residents.”
THE OPERATION BARBAROSSA, JUNE-DECEMBER 1941 © IWM (HU 111384)
Children who travelled east often ended up in orphanages. One woman Alexievich interviewed spoke of feeling protected and loved by the teachers, nannies, and matrons of her orphanage, but far more survivors testify to the lack of tenderness in these institutions. Some orphans observe that the effects of living in such harsh, uncaring places have been long-lasting. As adults, they admit to being emotionally stunted, disconnected, even alienated from others. Maria Puzan comments: “Everyone in the orphanage had trouble growing up. I think it’s probably from pining. We didn’t grow up because we heard so few tender words. We couldn’t grow up without mamas . . .” Affection was not the only thing orphans were starved of in these institutions. Food was extremely scarce. Animals used for labour were often sacrificed, but even this did not meet needs for long. Children ate grass, bark and the buds on trees. There is one striking account of an incident that occurred near the end of the war when conditions were still very harsh: children saved their own limited rations to give to German prisoners. There are other powerful stories of humanity while in hell. When they were incarcerated in a Lithuanian concentration camp, one mother repeatedly reminded her daughter: “We must remain human.” Another survivor, who was recruited to bring wounded Germans water, observes: “Hatred is a feeling that gets formed in a man, it’s not an innate thing.”
Alexievich’s book is full of rich and varied stories. There is a surprisingly humorous narrative of very young orphaned boys taken in by the Red Army. Compelled by officers to attend a school in one locale where the soldiers were stationed, the boys refused to cooperate with mere civilian teachers. We follow only the commands of our military leaders, they told their instructors. The commanding officer subsequently demoted them after issuing strict reminders that their job was to learn.
Orphans were sometimes taken in by partisan fighters as well. Occasionally they went on scouting or other missions. One ten-year-old child, Vasya Saulchenko, who was sent to get a wounded German’s gun, ended up shooting the soldier because the man pointed the weapon at Vasya’s face. This was the first time the boy killed, and it troubled him little during the war; there wasn’t time—“we lived among the dead,” he said, “we even got used to it,”—but, as an adult, he admits to being tormented by recurrent nightmares in which he is trying to fly away, but the soldier keeps pulling him down into a pit. The young adult edition does not retain the paragraphs in which Vasya admits he cannot speak to his son about his experiences. Telling him “would destroy his world. A world without war . . . People who haven’t seen a man kill another man are completely different people . . .” I don’t understand why this important passage was left out.
For me, some of the most poignant stories concern the fragile friendships that formed between children in the direst circumstances: orphanages, concentration camps, or on the streets of cities. One story tells of the close relationship between two boys—one Belarusian; the other, Jewish—who met on the streets of Minsk, lived together in an abandoned apartment, and started shoeshine and luggage-carrying businesses. They acted as porters for Nazi officers arriving by train. Fearing that his friend’s Jewish identity would be discovered, Eduard Voroshilov clipped back his pal Kim’s curly black hair and made sure the boy always wore a cap. One day when the two were anxiously awaiting payment, a German officer pushed Kim, knocking off his hat. His Jewish identity exposed, Kim was taken to the ghetto. Eduard saw him several times afterwards. He regularly went to the ghetto’s barbed-wire fence to toss potatoes to the boy . . . until, after a night of shouting that could be heard across the city, his Jewish friend disappeared.
Again and again while reading this book I thought of the opening line of Frank McCourt’s memoir “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all,” so well does it apply to the experiences of the eastern Europeans who tell their stories here. The majority of the last witnesses to whom Alexievich listened have themselves likely died by now. When they spoke to her, though middle-aged and older, they were still grieving their lost childhoods and they continued to long for their dead parents. The psychological effects of their wartime experiences were profound. Immediately after their traumas, many were unable to speak; a few were unconscious for days. Later, some were terrified by the noise or appearance of airplanes or trucks. Sleep disorders—nightmares, shouting, and sleepwalking—were common. Later, memory impairment made it challenging for them to learn in school, and emotional disturbances, including an inability to feel, to cry, to show affection, or forgive made close relationships difficult. “People were a burden to me, I had trouble being with them,” confesses one woman. “I kept something inside that I couldn’t share with anyone.” Another woman had learned from her mother’s experience that physical beauty was dangerous. She became alarmed when her own appearance was praised. Yet another told Alexievich she feared men, not dead ones but the living, and she had never married as a result. The loss of beloved pets and farm animals had caused extreme grief in childhood for some. One woman recalled crying for days as a child over the death by shrapnel of her beloved cat. So marked was she by that experience that when her own daughter begged her for a kitten she could not fulfill that wish. Some of these discussions of the traumatic aftereffects of war have been excluded from the young people’s edition of the book.
This is the third of Svetlana Alexievich’s oral histories I’ve read. I’ve been engaged and moved by all of them, but this one made me weep.
As an adult, of course I understand that Hitler had to be stopped, but that doesn’t mean I will ever believe war is a good idea.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a digital advanced reader copy. show less
I concurrently read ARCs of the adult and the more recent young adult editions of Last Witnesses (translated from the Russian) but my remarks will focus mostly on the latter. I was interested to see how a book, which provides first-hand accounts of wartime experiences and atrocities, would be altered for younger people. Not as much as you might think, it turns out. True, the young people’s version is shorter by about a third, containing only 65 of the original 100 accounts, a few of them with significant edits. Since the book is a collection of memories from some who were as young as two years of age in 1941 (when the Soviet-German War began), many of the recollections are understandably fragmentary. Editors of the young people’s version seem to have rejected a few of the original pieces because they are fractured and confusing, but it’s evident that more of them were excluded because of graphic content.
While the young adult edition of Last Witnesses has fewer survivor accounts than the original, it does have additional special features to make the material accessible. First of all, there’s an introduction, which provides basic information about the founding of the Soviet Union and the terror Stalin inflicted on his own people prior to World War II: the mass killings, including political and military purges that weakened the Red Army; the policies that led to deliberate, genocidal famine; and the creation of the gulag network. An overview of Hitler’s goals is also presented. Early in World War II, the Führer had agreed to leave the Soviet Union alone in exchange for the western half of Poland, but, buoyed by victories in western Europe, he changed his mind and invaded the USSR after all. The land was rich in natural resources—oil and minerals; the soil was suitable for agriculture; and, besides, only communists and racially inferior humans—Slavs and most of Europe’s Jews—lived there. A brief summary of the war itself—a war in which German “criminality against civilians . . . was pushed to an extreme”—follows. The introduction refers the reader to a map of eastern Europe, which includes the major cities mentioned in the witnesses’ recorded oral histories. Unfortunately, this essential component was lacking in both advanced reader copies. It’s not clear if the adult version was to include one at all, but I can’t imagine reading either edition without a map to show the vast distances child evacuees travelled (with other, unrelated children or with family members), usually in squalid cattle cars. Footnotes and a useful fifty-word glossary are also provided. The latter explains many words, terms, and events a younger audience might be unfamiliar with, as well as a few that adults might appreciate, too: “Boletus”, “katiushas”, and “quitrent”, for example, were words unknown to me.
Alexievich’s witnesses, even the youngest, recall the arrival of the Germans in June 1941. As children, they saw and heard the planes strafing the trains that were carrying them away from the fighting: to orphanages or settlements in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, or Siberia—and elsewhere. Others describe the bombing of their villages, the arrival of black trucks, black motorcycles, and black-uniformed interrogation squads, carrying lists and going door to door to flush out the families of partisan fighters. Up close, the Germans looked surprisingly “ordinary”: handsome, strong, and healthy. Many witnesses comment they had difficulty reconciling these laughing, joking, harmonica-playing youths with the heinous acts they committed.
Submachine gun fire from low-flying aircraft often killed parents as they fled cottages with their young. These were often the children’s first encounters with death, something most would grow used to. Families often ran into forests, sometimes to live among the partisans; other family groups travelled along roads, pushing or pulling carts with food and a few possessions. They made easy targets for the enemy overhead. Grandparents figure prominently in many accounts—rescuing children and small animals the children were attached to, chicks and kittens—but strangers played significant roles as well. Belarusian peasants commonly took in wandering or orphaned children, housed as many as six refugee families in a single dwelling, and despaired when they lacked food for those who were starving. In eastern European peasant communities, unrelated elders were often addressed as grandfather, grandmother, uncle, or aunt. During these dark times, they stepped in as though they really were blood relatives, putting their own lives at risk in order to shelter Jewish and partisan children.
The Germans regularly burned the Belarusian villages they entered. According to the Smithsonian Magazine online, “By one historian’s count, occupying forces murdered all the inhabitants of 629 razed Belarusian villages, in addition to burning down another 5,454 villages and killing at least a portion of their residents.”
THE OPERATION BARBAROSSA, JUNE-DECEMBER 1941 © IWM (HU 111384)
Children who travelled east often ended up in orphanages. One woman Alexievich interviewed spoke of feeling protected and loved by the teachers, nannies, and matrons of her orphanage, but far more survivors testify to the lack of tenderness in these institutions. Some orphans observe that the effects of living in such harsh, uncaring places have been long-lasting. As adults, they admit to being emotionally stunted, disconnected, even alienated from others. Maria Puzan comments: “Everyone in the orphanage had trouble growing up. I think it’s probably from pining. We didn’t grow up because we heard so few tender words. We couldn’t grow up without mamas . . .” Affection was not the only thing orphans were starved of in these institutions. Food was extremely scarce. Animals used for labour were often sacrificed, but even this did not meet needs for long. Children ate grass, bark and the buds on trees. There is one striking account of an incident that occurred near the end of the war when conditions were still very harsh: children saved their own limited rations to give to German prisoners. There are other powerful stories of humanity while in hell. When they were incarcerated in a Lithuanian concentration camp, one mother repeatedly reminded her daughter: “We must remain human.” Another survivor, who was recruited to bring wounded Germans water, observes: “Hatred is a feeling that gets formed in a man, it’s not an innate thing.”
Alexievich’s book is full of rich and varied stories. There is a surprisingly humorous narrative of very young orphaned boys taken in by the Red Army. Compelled by officers to attend a school in one locale where the soldiers were stationed, the boys refused to cooperate with mere civilian teachers. We follow only the commands of our military leaders, they told their instructors. The commanding officer subsequently demoted them after issuing strict reminders that their job was to learn.
Orphans were sometimes taken in by partisan fighters as well. Occasionally they went on scouting or other missions. One ten-year-old child, Vasya Saulchenko, who was sent to get a wounded German’s gun, ended up shooting the soldier because the man pointed the weapon at Vasya’s face. This was the first time the boy killed, and it troubled him little during the war; there wasn’t time—“we lived among the dead,” he said, “we even got used to it,”—but, as an adult, he admits to being tormented by recurrent nightmares in which he is trying to fly away, but the soldier keeps pulling him down into a pit. The young adult edition does not retain the paragraphs in which Vasya admits he cannot speak to his son about his experiences. Telling him “would destroy his world. A world without war . . . People who haven’t seen a man kill another man are completely different people . . .” I don’t understand why this important passage was left out.
For me, some of the most poignant stories concern the fragile friendships that formed between children in the direst circumstances: orphanages, concentration camps, or on the streets of cities. One story tells of the close relationship between two boys—one Belarusian; the other, Jewish—who met on the streets of Minsk, lived together in an abandoned apartment, and started shoeshine and luggage-carrying businesses. They acted as porters for Nazi officers arriving by train. Fearing that his friend’s Jewish identity would be discovered, Eduard Voroshilov clipped back his pal Kim’s curly black hair and made sure the boy always wore a cap. One day when the two were anxiously awaiting payment, a German officer pushed Kim, knocking off his hat. His Jewish identity exposed, Kim was taken to the ghetto. Eduard saw him several times afterwards. He regularly went to the ghetto’s barbed-wire fence to toss potatoes to the boy . . . until, after a night of shouting that could be heard across the city, his Jewish friend disappeared.
Again and again while reading this book I thought of the opening line of Frank McCourt’s memoir “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all,” so well does it apply to the experiences of the eastern Europeans who tell their stories here. The majority of the last witnesses to whom Alexievich listened have themselves likely died by now. When they spoke to her, though middle-aged and older, they were still grieving their lost childhoods and they continued to long for their dead parents. The psychological effects of their wartime experiences were profound. Immediately after their traumas, many were unable to speak; a few were unconscious for days. Later, some were terrified by the noise or appearance of airplanes or trucks. Sleep disorders—nightmares, shouting, and sleepwalking—were common. Later, memory impairment made it challenging for them to learn in school, and emotional disturbances, including an inability to feel, to cry, to show affection, or forgive made close relationships difficult. “People were a burden to me, I had trouble being with them,” confesses one woman. “I kept something inside that I couldn’t share with anyone.” Another woman had learned from her mother’s experience that physical beauty was dangerous. She became alarmed when her own appearance was praised. Yet another told Alexievich she feared men, not dead ones but the living, and she had never married as a result. The loss of beloved pets and farm animals had caused extreme grief in childhood for some. One woman recalled crying for days as a child over the death by shrapnel of her beloved cat. So marked was she by that experience that when her own daughter begged her for a kitten she could not fulfill that wish. Some of these discussions of the traumatic aftereffects of war have been excluded from the young people’s edition of the book.
This is the third of Svetlana Alexievich’s oral histories I’ve read. I’ve been engaged and moved by all of them, but this one made me weep.
As an adult, of course I understand that Hitler had to be stopped, but that doesn’t mean I will ever believe war is a good idea.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for providing me with a digital advanced reader copy. show less
I have a stupid Christmas tradition of accidentally reading at least one soul-crushingly bleak book over the festive season. The nadir of this was probably in 2013, when I read the first volume of Kafka's diaries then Nevil Shute's [b:On the Beach|38180|On the Beach|Nevil Shute|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327943327l/38180._SY75_.jpg|963772]. This year, I inexplicably picked up the only [a:Svetlana Alexievich|19003531|Svetlana Alexievich|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1612787420p2/19003531.jpg] book I'd yet to read, despite knowing that all her books are deeply upsetting. [b:Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II|42963288|Last Witnesses An Oral History of the show more Children of World War II|Svetlana Alexievich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543294152l/42963288._SY75_.jpg|51058451] is a similarly devastating experience to [b:War's Unwomanly Face|4025275|War's Unwomanly Face|Svetlana Alexievich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1338204032l/4025275._SX50_.jpg|15615499]. She collects accounts of Soviet children's experience during the Second World War, from toddlers to teenagers. Many witnessed the murder of their parents and the burning of their homes. Most survived by hiding, were helped by relatives or sent to an orphanage, and nearly starved. Some survived torture, transportation, and concentration camps. None remained unscathed:
Having read [b:War's Unwomanly Face|4025275|War's Unwomanly Face|Svetlana Alexievich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1338204032l/4025275._SX50_.jpg|15615499], I thought I was at least braced for the violence and cruelty these children faced. I don't think that's really possible, though. The appallingly macabre detail that haunts me, which I did not previously know, is that the Nazis drained the blood of young Soviet children to give their soldiers transfusions:
The Nazis selected blonde children from orphanages and concentration camps to exsanguinate, presumably on a twisted eugenic justification. These children did not survive for long, as too much of their blood was taken. How can we understand cruelties like these? Alexievich presents them without comment, inviting the reader to face the horrors that people can perpetrate. Heart-breaking in a different way are the glimpses of extraordinary resilience and humanity amid horror and violence. Reading at Christmas, this was especially memorable:
Alexievich's oeuvre is truly unlike anything else I've read. There is much that I wish I could articulate about understanding terrible collective suffering via a chorus of voices, both in her books and the novels of [a:Vasily Grossman|19595|Vasily Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391607075p2/19595.jpg], and how this arose from Russian history, politics, and culture. She is one of the most important chroniclers of the twentieth century, as she gathered accounts of its horrors so we cannot forget about them. Her books translate abstract historical descriptions with death tolls beyond what we can imagine into vivid tapestries of human experience. This balance of the individual and collective is difficult to achieve, yet amazingly powerful. For all that they are deeply upsetting, I think it is always worth reading Alexievich's books in an attempt to better understand the world. show less
I grew up with this... I grew up gloomy and mistrustful, I have a difficult character. When someone cries, I don't feel sorry; on the contrary, I feel better, because I myself don't know how to cry. I've been married twice, and twice my wife has left me. No one could stand me for long. It's hard to love me. I know it... I know it myself...
Many years have passed... Now I want to ask: Did God watch this? And what did He think? [This person was 8 in 1941.]
Having read [b:War's Unwomanly Face|4025275|War's Unwomanly Face|Svetlana Alexievich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1338204032l/4025275._SX50_.jpg|15615499], I thought I was at least braced for the violence and cruelty these children faced. I don't think that's really possible, though. The appallingly macabre detail that haunts me, which I did not previously know, is that the Nazis drained the blood of young Soviet children to give their soldiers transfusions:
I remember a little boy lying there, his arm hanging from the bed, bleeding. And other children crying... Every two or three weeks new children came. Some were taken somewhere, they were already pale and weak, and others brought. Fattened up.
German doctors thought that the blood of children under five years old contributed to the speedy recovery of the wounded. That it had a rejuvenating effect. I found this out later... of course, later... [This person was 5 in 1941.]
The Nazis selected blonde children from orphanages and concentration camps to exsanguinate, presumably on a twisted eugenic justification. These children did not survive for long, as too much of their blood was taken. How can we understand cruelties like these? Alexievich presents them without comment, inviting the reader to face the horrors that people can perpetrate. Heart-breaking in a different way are the glimpses of extraordinary resilience and humanity amid horror and violence. Reading at Christmas, this was especially memorable:
Still we did set up some sort of Christmas tree. It was mama, of course, who remembered that we were children. We cut bright pictures out of books, made paper balls - one side white, the other black, made garlands out of old threads. On that day we especially smiled at each other, and instead of presents (we didn't have any), we left little notes under the tree.
In my notes I wrote to mama, "Mama dear, I love you very much. Very, very much!" We gave each other presents of words. [This person was 7 in 1941.]
Alexievich's oeuvre is truly unlike anything else I've read. There is much that I wish I could articulate about understanding terrible collective suffering via a chorus of voices, both in her books and the novels of [a:Vasily Grossman|19595|Vasily Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391607075p2/19595.jpg], and how this arose from Russian history, politics, and culture. She is one of the most important chroniclers of the twentieth century, as she gathered accounts of its horrors so we cannot forget about them. Her books translate abstract historical descriptions with death tolls beyond what we can imagine into vivid tapestries of human experience. This balance of the individual and collective is difficult to achieve, yet amazingly powerful. For all that they are deeply upsetting, I think it is always worth reading Alexievich's books in an attempt to better understand the world. show less
Of the books on the Soviet Union which I have read, Last Witness is one of the best. Svetlana Alexievich has gift for capturing the heart of the Soviet people's tragedy during and after, "The Great Patriotic War." Alexievich illustrates through the personal testimony of those adults who were children during the war how the fighting never ended. After the war was over, after the victory parades were over and the children grew up, the war remained in their hearts and memories. They spoke of their experiences with reluctance, afraid of conjuring up the horror. Some of the children became child soldiers. Some witnessed their mothers getting shot and dying of her wounds. Fathers never returned home. Children were shipped to Nazi Germany to show more work in labor camps. Innocent villagers were lined up and shot in staggered counting in revenge. I remember a guest speaking to my high school class on his visit to the Soviet Union. Soviet citizens, he told us, often glared at him and his West German traveling companion because they were speaking to one another in German. This was in the early 60's. Every family in the Soviet Union suffered in the war. A child's suffering is especially traumatic. It was often written during Khrushchev's tenure that nuclear war with the United States was avoided because the Soviets knew much better than the Americans the devastation of total war. Last Witness was published in the Soviet Union in 1985. Only now is it available in translation, prompting the reader to ask why. The eloquent, agonized testimony that Alexievich succinctly renders well illustrates the reason for her being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. show less
Last Witnesses, Unchildlike Stories – Haunting Witnesses of the Past
Svetlana Alexievich’s fantastic oral history of those witness to the invasion of what was the old Soviet Union. When in June 1941 the Germans entered the new Soviet Union via Eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus as they headed north to Leningrad, South to Stalingrad and towards Moscow.
See this war from a child’s point of view is haunting and insightful and strangely memorable. Like most historians there are plenty of post-it-notes now adorning my copy, so that I can emphasise how war affects the innocent. Svetlana was way ahead of her time in recording this oral history, something that is finally coming to the fore in this country.
When you hear the words of Vasia show more Kharevsky who was 4 years old when the Germans came, stated “I’m a man without a childhood. Instead of a childhood, I have war.” He would have seen events unfold, where as a Slav he was deemed as ‘sub-human’ by the Germans. What happened as the German’s cut through the Soviet Union, had not been seen prior to 1941. This book brings out that history.
Or in the 1980s when interviewed Zina Kosiak, then a hairdresser, was 8 years old when war came. Her story is really the before and after, the after bringing misery and death, before the war happy memories of her family. “I’m already 51 years old. I have children of my own. But I still want my mama.” I recognise that feeling from my Grandfather, who as a Pole, whose relationship with his father ended because of war and exile and did not find out he had survived the war and lived until the 1970s.
One of the most poignant passages is something many families will understand, that once war was over it was rarely talked about. “Papa and mama were sure that there would never again be such a terrible war” fortunately that has held true.
“We are the last witnesses. Our time is ending. We must speak …….. Our words will be the last.”
This book is testament to those who witnessed a brutal war first hand, who are now becoming fewer. show less
Svetlana Alexievich’s fantastic oral history of those witness to the invasion of what was the old Soviet Union. When in June 1941 the Germans entered the new Soviet Union via Eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus as they headed north to Leningrad, South to Stalingrad and towards Moscow.
See this war from a child’s point of view is haunting and insightful and strangely memorable. Like most historians there are plenty of post-it-notes now adorning my copy, so that I can emphasise how war affects the innocent. Svetlana was way ahead of her time in recording this oral history, something that is finally coming to the fore in this country.
When you hear the words of Vasia show more Kharevsky who was 4 years old when the Germans came, stated “I’m a man without a childhood. Instead of a childhood, I have war.” He would have seen events unfold, where as a Slav he was deemed as ‘sub-human’ by the Germans. What happened as the German’s cut through the Soviet Union, had not been seen prior to 1941. This book brings out that history.
Or in the 1980s when interviewed Zina Kosiak, then a hairdresser, was 8 years old when war came. Her story is really the before and after, the after bringing misery and death, before the war happy memories of her family. “I’m already 51 years old. I have children of my own. But I still want my mama.” I recognise that feeling from my Grandfather, who as a Pole, whose relationship with his father ended because of war and exile and did not find out he had survived the war and lived until the 1970s.
One of the most poignant passages is something many families will understand, that once war was over it was rarely talked about. “Papa and mama were sure that there would never again be such a terrible war” fortunately that has held true.
“We are the last witnesses. Our time is ending. We must speak …….. Our words will be the last.”
This book is testament to those who witnessed a brutal war first hand, who are now becoming fewer. show less
„Azért emlékszem a háborúra, hogy megértsem… Különben minek?”
Irodalmi értelemben egészen biztosan nem ez Alekszijevics legkiforrottabb könyve. Talán mert itt jelenik meg legkevésbé a szövegben az író (a „riporter”), aki ezúttal teljesen háttérben marad, még a szöveg egységekre tagolásáról is lemond, így aztán a borzalmak riasztó egyhangúsággal potyognak az olvasó elé. Újra és újra és újra ugyanazok a motívumok: az evakuáció, az árvaság, az ún. „partizánok elleni háború”… Ugyanakkor meglehet, Alekszijevics szándékosan marad kívül a történeteken, ezzel is jelezve, ez nem az ő könyve, hanem az elbeszélőké: a gyerekeké. És jelezve egy füst alatt azt is, ami az show more életmű egyik vezérfonala: hogy a háború nem kaland, nem hősiesség, hanem a borzalom monotonitása. Olyan idő, amiben kifordultak önmagukból a hétköznapok.
A gyerek-elbeszélőkben amúgy nem az a pláne, hogy aranyosak, vagy akár az ártatlanságuk – hanem hogy nincs viszonyítási alapjuk. Nekik a háború az az élmény (sőt, csupa nagybetűvel: ÉLMÉNY), ami alapvetően meghatározta őket. Nem a szerelem, az iskola, a sportszakkör, hanem a halál mindennapisága. Nem tudják úgy értelmezni a tapasztalatokat, ahogy azt egy felnőtt tenné, nem értik az okokat, a történelmi kontextust, képtelenek viszonyítani mondjuk a sztálini tisztogatásokhoz vagy a ’30-as évek éhínségeihez – de ez így van rendjén. Mert ami velük történik, annak konkrétan nincs köze a világválsághoz, a szélsőségek térnyeréséhez, a kommunista rezsim bűneihez, csak saját személyes áldozatiságukhoz, privát sorsukhoz – vagy inkább sorstalanságukhoz. Úgy hullik rájuk ez az egész, mint valami hektikus Isten rendelése. Persze így hullott szinte mindenkire, de esetükben ez még feltűnőbb. Aztán persze később, felnőttkorukban talán elemezhetnék a látottakat, ám feltűnő módon nem teszik. Talán mert az ilyen iszonyatos élményeket képtelenség értelmezni – ahhoz túl erősek. Csak újraélni lehet őket. De hát azt meg… show less
Irodalmi értelemben egészen biztosan nem ez Alekszijevics legkiforrottabb könyve. Talán mert itt jelenik meg legkevésbé a szövegben az író (a „riporter”), aki ezúttal teljesen háttérben marad, még a szöveg egységekre tagolásáról is lemond, így aztán a borzalmak riasztó egyhangúsággal potyognak az olvasó elé. Újra és újra és újra ugyanazok a motívumok: az evakuáció, az árvaság, az ún. „partizánok elleni háború”… Ugyanakkor meglehet, Alekszijevics szándékosan marad kívül a történeteken, ezzel is jelezve, ez nem az ő könyve, hanem az elbeszélőké: a gyerekeké. És jelezve egy füst alatt azt is, ami az show more életmű egyik vezérfonala: hogy a háború nem kaland, nem hősiesség, hanem a borzalom monotonitása. Olyan idő, amiben kifordultak önmagukból a hétköznapok.
A gyerek-elbeszélőkben amúgy nem az a pláne, hogy aranyosak, vagy akár az ártatlanságuk – hanem hogy nincs viszonyítási alapjuk. Nekik a háború az az élmény (sőt, csupa nagybetűvel: ÉLMÉNY), ami alapvetően meghatározta őket. Nem a szerelem, az iskola, a sportszakkör, hanem a halál mindennapisága. Nem tudják úgy értelmezni a tapasztalatokat, ahogy azt egy felnőtt tenné, nem értik az okokat, a történelmi kontextust, képtelenek viszonyítani mondjuk a sztálini tisztogatásokhoz vagy a ’30-as évek éhínségeihez – de ez így van rendjén. Mert ami velük történik, annak konkrétan nincs köze a világválsághoz, a szélsőségek térnyeréséhez, a kommunista rezsim bűneihez, csak saját személyes áldozatiságukhoz, privát sorsukhoz – vagy inkább sorstalanságukhoz. Úgy hullik rájuk ez az egész, mint valami hektikus Isten rendelése. Persze így hullott szinte mindenkire, de esetükben ez még feltűnőbb. Aztán persze később, felnőttkorukban talán elemezhetnék a látottakat, ám feltűnő módon nem teszik. Talán mert az ilyen iszonyatos élményeket képtelenség értelmezni – ahhoz túl erősek. Csak újraélni lehet őket. De hát azt meg… show less
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Author Information
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Svetlana Alexievich was born in Stanislav, Ukraine, Soviet Union on May 31, 1948. She became a journalist and wrote narratives from interviews with witnesses to events such as World War II, the Soviet-Afghan war, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster. Her books include Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War and War's show more Unwomanly Face. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2005 for Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II
- Original title
- Последние свидетели: сто недетских колыбельных
- Original publication date
- 1985; 2018 (Nederlandse vertaling) (Nederlandse vertaling)
- Important events*
- Tweede Wereldoorlog
- Original language*
- Russisch
- Disambiguation notice
- This work (Последние свидетели/Last Witnesses/Die letzten Zeugen/Últimos testigos/etc) is about World War II through children's eyes. Please do not combine it with Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, ... (show all)which is a totally different work.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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