Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II

by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear (Translator), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)

Overview

“A masterpiece” (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize–winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.” 

Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded—a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. 

Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. 

Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.

Praise for Last Witnesses

“There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting.”—The Guardian

“A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium. . . . Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses.”—The New Republic

“A profound triumph.”—The Big Issue

“[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities. . . . It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict.”—The Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399588761
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	503,918
Product dimensions:	5.23(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, in 1948 and has spent most of her life in the Soviet Union and present-day Belarus, with prolonged periods of exile in Western Europe. Starting out as a journalist, she developed her own nonfiction genre, which gathers a chorus of voices to describe a specific historical moment. Her works include The Unwomanly Face of War (1985), Last Witnesses (1985), Zinky Boys (1990), Voices from Chernobyl (1997), and Secondhand Time (2013). She has won many international awards, including the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

Read an Excerpt

“He was afraid to look back . . .”

Zhenya Belkevich

Six years old. Now a worker.

June 1941 . . .

I remember it. I was very little, but I remember everything . . .

The last thing I remember from the peaceful life was a fairy tale that mama read us at bedtime. My favorite one—about the Golden Fish. I also always asked something from the Golden Fish: “Golden Fish . . . Dear Golden Fish . . .” My sister asked, too. She asked differently: “By order of the pike, by my like . . .” We wanted to go to our grandmother for the summer and have papa come with us. He was so much fun.

In the morning I woke up from fear. From some unfamiliar sounds . . .

Mama and papa thought we were asleep, but I lay next to my sister pretending to sleep. I saw papa kiss mama for a long time, kiss her face and hands, and I kept wondering: he’s never kissed her like that before. They went outside, they were holding hands, I ran to the window—mama hung on my father’s neck and wouldn’t let him go. He tore free of her and ran, she caught up with him and again held him and shouted something. Then I also shouted: “Papa! Papa!”

My little sister and brother Vasya woke up, my sister saw me crying, and she, too, shouted: “Papa!” We all ran out to the porch: “Papa!” Father saw us and, I remember it like today, covered his head with his hands and walked off, even ran. He was afraid to look back.

The sun was shining in my face. So warm . . . And even now I can’t believe that my father left that morning for the war. I was very little, but I think I realized that I was seeing him for the last time. That I would never meet him again. I was very . . . very little . . .

It became connected like that in my memory, that war is when there’s no papa . . .

Then I remember: the black sky and the black plane. Our mama lies by the road with her arms spread. We ask her to get up, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t rise. The soldiers wrapped mama in a tarpaulin and buried her in the sand, right there. We shouted and begged: “Don’t put our mama in the ground. She’ll wake up and we’ll go on.” Some big beetles crawled over the sand . . . I couldn’t imagine how mama was going to live with them under the ground. How would we find her afterward, how would we meet her? Who would write to our papa?

One of the soldiers asked me: “What’s your name, little girl?” But I forgot. “And what’s your last name, little girl? What’s your mother’s name?” I didn’t remember . . . We sat by mama’s little mound till night, till we were picked up and put on a cart. The cart was full of children. Some old man drove us, he gathered up everybody on the road. We came to a strange village and strangers took us all to different cottages.

I didn’t speak for a long time. I only looked.

Then I remember—summer. Bright summer. A strange woman strokes my head. I begin to cry. I begin to speak . . . To tell about mama and papa. How papa ran away from us and didn’t even look back . . . How mama lay . . . How the beetles crawled over the sand . . .

The woman strokes my head. In those moments I realized: she looks like my mama . . .

“My first and last cigarette . . .”

Gena Yushkevich

Twelve years old. Now a journalist.

The morning of the first day of the war . . .

Sun. And unusual quiet. Incomprehensible silence.

Our neighbor, an officer’s wife, came out to the yard all in tears. She whispered something to mama, but gestured that they had to be quiet. Everybody was afraid to say aloud what had happened, even when they already knew, since some had been informed. But they were afraid that they’d be called provocateurs. Panic-­mongers. That was more frightening than the war. They were afraid . . . This is what I think now . . . And of course no one believed it. What?! Our army is at the border, our leaders are in the Kremlin! The country is securely protected, it’s invulnerable to the enemy! That was what I thought then . . . I was a young Pioneer.

We listened to the radio. Waited for Stalin’s speech. We needed his voice. But Stalin was silent. Then Molotov gave a speech. Everybody listened. Molotov said, “It’s war.” Still no one believed it yet. Where is Stalin?

Planes flew over the city . . . Dozens of unfamiliar planes. With crosses. They covered the sky, covered the sun. Terrible! Bombs rained down . . . There were sounds of ceaseless explosions. Rattling. Everything was happening as in a dream. Not in reality. I was no longer little—I remember my feelings. My fear, which spread all over my body. All over my words. My thoughts. We ran out of the house, ran somewhere down the streets . . . It seemed as if the city was no longer there, only ruins. Smoke. Fire. Somebody said we must run to the cemetery, because they wouldn’t bomb a cemetery. Why bomb the dead? In our neighborhood there was a big Jewish cemetery with old trees. And everybody rushed there, thousands of people gathered there. They embraced the monuments, hid behind the tombstones.

Mama and I sat there till nightfall. Nobody around uttered the word war. I heard another word: provocation. Everybody repeated it. People said that our troops would start advancing any moment. On Stalin’s orders. People believed it.

But the sirens on the chimneys in the outskirts of Minsk wailed all night . . .

The first dead . . .

The first dead I saw was a horse . . . Then a dead woman . . . That surprised me. My idea was that only men were killed in war.

I woke up in the morning . . . I wanted to leap out of bed, then I remembered—it’s war, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to believe it.

There was no more shooting in the streets. Suddenly it was quiet. For several days it was quiet. And then all of a sudden there was movement . . . There goes, for instance, a white man, white all over, from his shoes to his hair. Covered with flour. He carries a white sack. Another is running . . . Tin cans fall out of his pockets, he has tin cans in his hands. Candy . . . Packs of tobacco . . . Someone carries a hat filled with sugar . . . A pot of sugar . . . Indescribable! One carries a roll of fabric, another goes all wrapped in blue calico. Red calico . . . It’s funny, but nobody laughs. Food warehouses had been bombed. A big store not far from our house . . . People rushed to take whatever was left there. At a sugar factory several men drowned in vats of sugar syrup. Terrible! The whole city cracked sunflower seeds. They found a stock of sunflower seeds somewhere. Before my eyes a woman came running to a store . . . She had nothing with her: no sack or net bag—so she took off her slip. Her leggings. She stuffed them with buckwheat. Carried it off. All that silently for some reason. Nobody talked.

When I called my mother, there was only mustard left, yellow jars of mustard. “Don’t take anything,” mama begged. Later she told me she was ashamed, because all her life she had taught me differently. Even when we were starving and remembering these days, we still didn’t regret anything. That’s how my mother was.

In town . . . German soldiers calmly strolled in our streets. They filmed everything. Laughed. Before the war we had a favorite game—we made drawings of Germans. We drew them with big teeth. Fangs. And now they’re walking around . . . Young, handsome . . . With handsome grenades tucked into the tops of their sturdy boots. Play harmonicas. Even joke with our pretty girls.

An elderly German was dragging a box. The box was heavy. He beckoned to me and gestured: help me. The box had two handles, we took it by these handles. When we had brought it where we were told to, the German patted me on the shoulder and took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Meaning here’s your pay.

I came home. I couldn’t wait, I sat in the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. I didn’t hear the door open and mama come in.

“Smoking, eh?”

“Mm-­hmm . . .”

“What are these cigarettes?”

“German.”

“So you smoke, and you smoke the enemy’s cigarettes. That is treason against the Motherland.”

This was my first and last cigarette.

Table of Contents

Instead of a Preface xiii

"He Was Afraid to Look Back …" 3

"My First and Last Cigarette …" 5

"Grandma Prayed … She Asked that My Soul Come Back …" 9

"They Lay Pink on the Cinders …" 10

"I Still Want My Mama …" 14

"Such Pretty German Toys …" 18

"A Handful of Salt … All that was Left of Our House …" 23

"And I Kissed All the Portraits in My Schoolbook …" 27

"I Gathered Them with My Hands … They Were Very White …" 30

"I Want to Live! I Want to Live! …" 32

"Through a Buttonhole …" 34

"All I Heard was Mama's Cry …" 37

"We Played. And the Soldiers Wept …" 40

"In the Cemetery the Dead Lay Above Ground … As If They'd Been Killed Again …" 43

"I Realized-This was My Father … My Knees Trembled …" 45

"Close Your Eyes. Sonny … Don't Look …" 48

"My Little Brother Cries. Because He Wasn't There When Papa was There …" 51

"That Girl was the First to Come …" 53

"I'm Your Mama …" 56

"We Ask: Can We Lick It? …" 58

"… An Extra Half-Spoon of Sugar" 60

"Dear House. Don't Burn! Dear House. Don't Burn! …" 64

"She Came in a White Smock. Like Mama …" 67

"Auntie. Take Me On Your Knees …" 69

"… and Began to Rock Her Like a Doll" 71

They Had Already Bought Me a Primer …" 73

"… Neither Suitors Nor Soldiers …" 82

"If Only One Son Could be Left …" 84

"He Wiped His Tears with His Sleeve …" 87

"He Hung on the String Like a Baby …" 89

"You'll be My Children Now …" 92

"We Kissed their Hands …" 94

"I Looked at Them with a Little Girl's Eyes …" 96

"Our Mama Didn't Smile …" 98

"I Couldn't Get Used to My Name …" 100

"His Army Shirt was Wet …" 102

"As if She had Saved His Own Daughter …" 105

"They Carried Me to the Unit in their Arms … I Was All One bruise from Head to Foot …" 108

"And Why Am I So Small? …" 111

"They were Drawn by the Human Scent …" 113

"Why Did they Shoot Her in the Face? My Mama Was So Beautiful …" 115

"You Asked Me To Finish You Off …" 120

"And I Didn't Even Have a Scare On …" 124

"No One to Play Outside With …" 127

"I'll Open the Window at Night … and Give the Pages to the Wind …" 129

"Dig Here …" 135

"Grandpa was Buried Under the Window …" 137

"… And They Tamped it Down with the Shovels. So It Looked Pretty" 138

"I'll Buy Myself a Dress with a Little Bow …" 141

"How Did He Die. If There Was No Shooting Today? …" 144

"Because We're Girls. And He's a Boy …" 150

"You're No Brother of Mine. If You Play with German Boys …" 153

"We Even Forgot That Word …" 158

"You Should Go to the Front. But You Fall in Love with My Mama …" 164

"In the Last Moments they Shouted their Names …" 170

"All Four of Us Pulled That Sledge …" 172

"These Two Boys Became Light as Sparrows …" 175

"I Was Embarrassed to be Wearing Girls' Shoes …" 178

"I Screamed and Screamed … I Couldn't Stop …" 183

"We All Joined Hands …" 185

"We Didn't Even Know How to Bury … But Now We Somehow Recalled It …" 187

"He Gathered Them in a Basket …" 189

"They Took the Kittens Out of the Cottage …" 192

"Remember: 6 Park Street. Mariupol …" 195

"I Heard His Heart Stop …" 197

"I Ran Away to the Front Following My Sister. First Sergeant Vera Redkina …" 201

"In the Direction of the Sunrise …" 202

"A White Shirt Shines Far Off in the Dark …" 206

"On the Clean Floor that I Had Just Washed …" 209

"Did God Watch This? and What Did He Think? …" 212

"The Wide World is Wondrous …" 214

"They Brought Long, Thin Candy … It Looked Like Pencils …" 219

"The Little Trunk was Just His Size …" 221

"I Was Afraid of That Dream …" 223

"I Wanted to be Mama's Only Child … So She Could Pamper Me …" 224

"But. Like Rubber Balls. They Didn't Sink …" 226

I Remember the Blue. Blue Sky … and Our Planes in That Sky …" 231

"Like Ripe Pumpkins …" 233

"We Ate … The Park …" 236

"Whoever Cries Will be Shot …" 240

"Dear Mama and Dear Papa-Golden Words …" 242

"They Brought Her Back in Pieces …" 244

"The Chicks had Just Hatched … I Was Afraid They'd Be Killed …" 247

"King of Clubs … King of Diamonds …" 248

"A Big Family Photograph …" 253

"At Least Let Me Pour Some Little Potatoes in Your Pockets …" 254

"A is for Apple. B is for Ball …" 256

"He Gave Me An Astrakhan Hat with a Red Ribbon …" 258

"And I Fired into the Air …" 262

"My Mother Carried Me to First Grade in Her Arms …" 264

"My Dear Dog. Forgive Me … My Dear Dog. Forgive Me …" 266

"And She Ran Away: 'That's Not My Daughter! Not Mi-I-Ine!'" 270

"Were We Really Children? We Were Men and Women …" 272

"Don't Give Some Stranger Papa's Suit …" 274

"At Night I Cried: Where is My Cheerful Mama? …" 276

"He Won't Let Me Fly Away …" 278

"Everybody Wanted to Kiss the Word Victory …" 280

"Wearing a Shirt Made from My Father's Army Shirt …" 281

"I Decorated it with Red Carnations …" 282

"I Waited A Long Time for My Father … All My Life …" 285

"At that Limit … That Brink …" 286

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”

“[Svetlana] Alexievich presents less a straightforward oral history of World War II than a literary excavation of memory itself.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Alexievich has forged her own distinctive identity: as a witness to witnesses who usually go unheard. . . . In a ‘post-truth’ era when journalism is under pressure—susceptible to propaganda, sensationalism, and ‘alternative facts’—the power of documentary literature stands out more clearly than ever. . . . Listen to Alexievich.”—The Atlantic

“[Alexievich’s] books are woven from hundreds of interviews, in a hybrid form of reportage and oral history that has the quality of a documentary film on paper. But Alexievich is anything but a simple recorder and transcriber of found voices; she has a writerly voice of her own which emerges from the chorus she assembles, with great style and authority, and she shapes her investigations of Soviet and post-Soviet life and death into epic dramatic chronicles as universally essential as Greek tragedies. . . . A mighty documentarian and a mighty artist.”—The New Yorker

“Alexievich has gained probably the world’s deepest, most eloquent understanding of the post-Soviet condition. . . . [She] has consistently chronicled that which has been intentionally forgotten.”—Masha Gessen

“Alexievich stations herself at a crossroads of history and turns on her tape recorder. The result is oral history that at times can feel more authentic than narrated history. Alexievich makes it feel intimate, as if you are sitting in the kitchen with the characters, sharing in their happiness and agony.”—The Washington Post

“Alexievich’s witnesses are those who haven’t had a say. She shows us from these conversations, many of them coming at the confessional kitchen table of Russian apartments, that it’s powerful simply to be allowed to tell one’s own story. This is the kind of history, otherwise almost unacknowledged by today’s dictatorships, that matters.”—The Christian Science Monitor

From the Publisher

A chilling, enchanted naturalism fills the book's pages…Alexievich offers a war narrative that hews closer to the Brothers Grimm than to Homer. The book's gift is to allow the child's malleable perception to flash alongside the adult's somber recollections…How adroitly Alexievich sticks her landings should warn readers against treating these interviews as journalistic records of raw testimony. In form and spirit they are closer to prose poems, sometimes even songs, built around repeating refrains. Alexievich is a master at employing the withheld detail to undercut the unfiltered sentimentalism of a narrator, or adding a poetic sting to an otherwise prosaic entry.

The New York Times Book Review - Sana Krasikov

05/06/2019

In this moving work of oral history, originally published in 1985 and appearing in English for the first time, Nobel-winning journalist Alexievich collages together WWII survivors’ accounts. The book brings together engrossing and frequently graphic testimonies from 101 Russians who were under the age of 15 at the time of the events described. Absent a historical timeline—or, indeed, any prose in Alexievich’s voice—there is a subtle chronological and geographic movement; the memories move from town to town between the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the Nazi surrender in May 1945. The interviewees recall the hunger not assuaged by grass or potatoes, the sounds and the smells of war, the abuse they suffered (one was used to detect mines and another, then six, suffered “nine bullet wounds”), the crushing losses (“I never found my mama and papa, I don’t even know my real last name”), and the horrifying events (“Our neighbors... were hanging from the well pole,” one recounts; another remembers seeing his mother shot to death in the street). This disturbing and inspiring literary monument to the human, humane spirit that survives unimaginable horror brings to life the devastation of war. Agent: Galina Dursthoff, Literary Agency Galina Dursthoff. (July)

Publishers Weekly

2019-04-28
The Nobel laureate brings her unique style of collecting firsthand memories to the stories of those who were children during World War II.

Like all of Alexievich's (The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, 2017, etc.) books, this one makes for a difficult but powerful reading experience. The Nazis ruthlessly killed entire villages or took all the men who might be partisans out to be shot, transporting women and children to concentration camps. One universal memory of these children was the complete lack of color: Everything was gray or black; spring never arrived. Many raged that they never had a childhood, which was stolen from them. As one 13-year-old recounts, "I learned to be a good shot….But I forgot my math…." The children were not immune to Nazi tortures, and the author does not hide that fact from readers. Even 70 years later, many couldn't bear to remember the horrors of separation, the killings, and the hunger, which was perpetual—many ate grass, bark, even dirt. One man said there were no tears in him; he didn't know how to cry. The ages of Alexievich's subjects range from 4 to 15 years, most in the younger range because the teenagers were usually taken for slave labor or shot. Children were sold as slaves to German farmers and worked to death, but one of the most heinous crimes has to be the Aryan-looking children's being taken to camps so their blood could be used for transfusions for injured soldiers. The stories of escaping to the East, many alone, are remarkable, especially as we see the total strangers who took them in and treated them as family. Strangers were all they knew, and it was strangers who saved them. There are some uplifting stories of parents finding their children after the war, but many never found anyone.

As usual, Alexievich shines a bright light on those who were there; an excellent book but not for the faint of heart.

Kirkus Reviews