The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Jewish Lives) [Hardcover]

Wiktoria Sliwowska (Editor), Julian Bussgang (Translator), Fay Bussgang (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Polish

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 1 edition (May 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810115107
• ISBN-13: 978-0810115101
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #794,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Eastern European

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome addition to the growing body of Holocaust studies., February 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

In The Last Eyewitnesses, the editor, Wiktoria Sliwowska, has presented her own testimony of the destruction of Polish Jewry as well as those of her contemporaries.These have been assembled by the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland. The special character of this anthology lies in the fact that these Jews, mostly in their sixties and seventies now, have come together to relate their childhood memories of the Holocaust, when childhood was denied to them. The reader becomes a witness to a unique cathartic experience. The translation of Julian and Fay Bussgang has given the English reader the opportunity to encounter these testimonies, full of the stark details which contradict everything expected from childhood. It is chilling to hear of the young who, besides being faced with constant want and privation and witness to violence and brutalization, also have to deal with an immediate and mature realization that their own lives are tenuous and threatened day by day. One individual describes his fear and panic, as he and his sister fled from their pursuers into the woods, as well as the subsequent pain and guilt for having separated from her during their attempted escape. His path led to life, while hers led to death. It is painful to read of children who are clearly aware that in their circumstances, it is dangerous to be a Jew. A new word has entered their Jewish vocabulary, "Action", a raid by Germans and their cohorts to seize Jews for death, either to be killed on the spot or taken to the death camps. One can scarcely imagine living with the ever-present fear of being discovered - afraid of one's dark Jewish appearance, living in cellars or closets, forbidden to approach a window, hiding in the woods. The sad fate of Polish Jewry is revealed in the statement of one teenage girl upon returning home after liberation: "...In my one and only little dress, without a cent to my name, I traveled to where Mama, Dorota, and the rest of the family were sent to the ghetto. Here, after arriving at my destination, I lived through the worst moment of my life. I did not anybody, not a single blessed soul." Not only did they not find many of their loved-ones or any vibrant Jewish community after the War, but they found anti-Semitism still alive, though their families were dead. These children spent at least six years trying to divest themselves of their Jewish identity. They had to change their names, sometimes several times, change their language, in many cases, and learn Catholic prayers and rituals. Many survivors have never returned to their original, Jewish names. As one sees by the names listed in the table of contents, many have never really recovered their identities as Jews. One individual expresses his confusion about whether he is a Jewish-Pole or a Polish-Jew. The histories presented here cover the entire gamut from total alienation from Jewish contacts to strenuous effort to learn about their background and Israel. As one reads the various depositions, one is amazed that any children could have lived through such inimical circumstances. One is amazed at the efforts of courage and sacrifice, love and desperation on the part of these parents to give up their children to strangers in the hope that they might live through the horrible German regime. One is also amazed at the stories of great courage on the part of many Poles in the rescue efforts described. "Antek" Cukierman, hero of the Warsaw Ghetto, has commented that one Pole could betray a hundred hiding Jews, but it took a hundred Poles to save a single Jew. These accounts verify that reality, as does Yad Vashem's recognition of many of them to be included in the ranks of the Righteous Among the Nations. The people who have come forth in the aftermath of the Holocaust to give these accounts of their personal lives and tragedies, as they struggle to define their identities, have gone on to demonstrate that there can be life after the Holocaust, but there can never be an elimination of its legacy.And this legacy will extend beyond the lives of even these and other last witnesses. Abraham Rzepkowicz, Reviewer

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memories of Lost Childhood, December 20, 1999

By 

Abraham Rzepkowicz - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

In The Last Eyewitnesses, the editor, Wiktoria Sliwowska, has presented her own testimony of the destruction of Polish Jewry as well as those of her contemporaries. These have been assembled by the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland. The special character of this anthology lies in the fact that these Jews, mostly in their sixties and seventies now, have come together to relate their childhood memories of the Holocaust, when childhood was denied to them. The reader becomes a witness to a unique cathartic experience. The translation of Julian and Fay Bussgang has given the English reader the opportunity to encounter these testimonies, full of the stark details which contradict everything expected from childhood. Primarily, these survivors learned that in their circumstances, it was dangerous to be a Jew. These children spent at least six years of their lives trying to divest themselves of their Jewish identity. They had to change their names, sometimes several times, change their language, in many cases, and learn Catholic prayers and rituals. As one sees by the names listed in the table of contents, many have never really recovered their identities as Jews. The histories provided demonstrate that there can be life after the Holocaust, but there can never be an elimination of its legacy. And this legacy will extend beyond the lives of even these and other last witnesses.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Polish child survivors speak of their Holocaust experiences., January 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Jewish Lives) (Hardcover)

The 65 personal histories chronicled here represent the scope and variety of experiences Polish child survivors of the Holocaust underwent. They tell of kindness and cruelty, of good luck and bad, of the survival of a complete nuclear family and the survival of one who knows only that he is, by origin, a Jew. Because this these people originally came from all over Poland, they faced persecution by not only the Nazis and their Belarussian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian collaborators, but also from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and various other anti-Semitic, anti-Polish groups.

Most of these chronicles convey the sense of absolute aloneness and isolation their tellers must have felt. However, a number reveal connections among the group of contributors, connections that hint at the scope of the Jewish community that existed in Poland before the Nazis invaded.

The individual stories are compelling. Their cumulative effect is powerful. They bear witness to the spectrum of human capacity for good and for evil, and, above all, to the twists of fate that meant the difference between death and survival. Accounts of the lingering, ever-present effects of suffering resulting from the events of over 50 years ago serve as reminders that the past is, indeed, never really over.