Review: Last Witnesses
Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults)
by Svetlana Alexievich, Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Delacorte Press (imprint of Penguin Random House)
Category: Young Adults
Reviewer: Meg Wiviott
In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact, an unofficial agreement in which the two countries agreed to
stipulations of non-aggression against one another and to partition and
divide Poland. Despite this agreement, German invaded the Soviet Union
in June of 1941. Last Witnesses (Adapted for Young Adults) presents an
oral history of the children of the Great Patriotic War (what we in the
West know as either Operation Barbarossa or the Eastern Front of WWII).
Originally published for adults in Russian in 1985 as Last Witnesses: An
Oral History of the Children of World War II, Penguin Random House has
now made both adult and a young adult adaptation available in English.
Nobel Prize winning author Alexievich’s interviews with survivors of the
invasion and four years of war provide a harrowing story not often
covered in WWII or Holocaust studies. One constant theme through the
sixty-five stories—and I use that term loosely as these are
forty-year-old memories of trauma—is the loss of or separation from
parents, caused not only by death but by physical separation. The
invasion occurred in June, as many young Soviet children were away at
Pioneer Camp. Towns and cities were overrun swiftly and children were
moved further East, away from the conflict. Many children grew up in
orphanages or were taken in by strangers. Few were reunited with their
parents. Alexievich’s work provides greater insight to the breadth of
the Holocaust; a reminder that Jews were not the only victims of the
Holocaust, somewhere between 13 and 15 million Soviet citizens were
murdered by Nazis.
This book has tremendous literary merit and should be added to every WWII and Holocaust collection. The research is impeccable and the content is appropriate for young adult readers (I would point out that there is a difference between ‘adapted for’ and written for). However, it does not meet the criteria for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. While it is a book about the Holocaust, it is not a story about Jews.
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