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Innocent Witnesses

Childhood Memories of World War II

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

In a book that will touch hearts and minds, acclaimed cultural historian Marilyn Yalom presents firsthand accounts of six witnesses to war, each offering lasting memories of how childhood trauma transforms lives.

The violence of war leaves indelible marks, and memories last a lifetime for those who experienced this trauma as children. Marilyn Yalom experienced World War II from afar, safely protected in her home in Washington, DC. But over the course of her life, she came to be close friends with many less lucky, who grew up under bombardment across Europe—in France, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, England, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Holland. With Innocent Witnesses, Yalom collects the stories from these accomplished luminaries and brings us voices of a vanishing generation, the last to remember World War II.

Memory is notoriously fickle: it forgets most of the past, holds on to bits and pieces, and colors the truth according to unconscious wishes. But in the circle of safety Marilyn Yalom created for her friends, childhood memories return in all their startling vividness. This powerful collage of testimonies offers us a greater understanding of what it is to be human, not just then but also today. With this book, her final and most personal work of cultural history, Yalom considers the lasting impact of such young experiences—and asks whether we will now force a new generation of children to spend their lives reconciling with such memories.

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    • Kirkus

      November 15, 2020
      A moving anthology of firsthand accounts of childhood experiences during World War II. This collection is being published just over a year after Yalom's passing; the text was edited by the author's son, Ben. "Each of the stories," writes the author in the introduction, "presents a micro-history of World War II as filtered through a child's sensibility, and each draws us into the world of a particular child." Because the narratives, which span Europe and the U.S., draw on previously published memoirs by each of the seven subjects (including Yalom), this book functions as something of a summary, via literature, of personal WWII memories. Due to the focus on children's perspectives, the stories are light on political and socio-economic analysis of the historical period they depict, but each contributor provides a vivid, harrowing window into how those years felt to them. It's clear that Yalom is interested in how feeling is registered in memory. "What we 'choose' to remember is more than the incident itself; it is also the accompanying affect," she writes. Though the accounts fail to adequately address the colonial context out of which WWII arose, the on-the-ground impressions are consistently memorable. Throughout, Yalom's dedication to feminism is evident, as the book offers sharp descriptions of how women were treated during and after the war, including those who were punished for their relationships with soldiers in the occupying army. Especially informative is Winfried Weiss' account of growing up in Germany and witnessing how anti-Semitic tropes were disseminated by the media's propaganda machine across generations. For the victims of the Nazis, a recurring theme is the trauma of being separated from parents and hearing about the deaths of relatives in concentration camps. In her foreword, novelist Meg Waite Clayton delivers a gracious tribute to Yalom and her work. An ever timely account of the traumas that conflict imposes upon children and how they reverberate through time.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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