World War II, Through Children’s Eyes

Last Witnesses was the second book by Svetlana Alexievich, originally published in 1985, the same year as her first, The Unwomanly Face of War. Because the book was composed in the early ’80s, it of course collects the memories of older people who were children during the war, but those recollections are so deeply etched that they appear uncorrupted by passing time; in them their protagonists are forever children. They are matter-of-fact in their accounts of terrible things—a nine-year-old girl remembers how after two families of partisans were hanged in the depths of winter, their frozen bodies “tinkled” as they swung in the wind; a twelve-year-old boy remembers using frozen German corpses as sleds.

Source: www.bookforum.com