Witnesses of War. Children's Lives Under the Nazis [Import] [Hardcover]

Nicholas Stargardt (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape; First Edition edition (2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0224064797
• ISBN-13: 978-0224064798
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.8 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,237,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Children in War, Children at War, February 14, 2006

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis (Hardcover)

Soldiers fight wars, and suffer in them; it's their duty, but theirs is not the only suffering. "In all wars, children are victims," writes Nicholas Stargardt in the introduction to _Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis_ (Knopf). "The Second World War differed only in the unprecedented extent to which this is true." Stargardt's book is a massive compilation of horrors and sadnesses of what happened to children mostly in Germany and occupied Poland. Children were shot, killed by starvation and disease, frozen, and incinerated in firestorms. They witnessed mass shootings and mass rapes, especially by the conquering Red Army. Some of them were devoted to the Nazi cause and became among the last fighters for it. Some saved their families from starvation by smuggling. To tell the different facets of this painful story, Stargardt has not concentrated on memoirs written in the post-war years (although these are included, along with reflections on what the memoirists have left out), but has instead extensively used children's drawings, letters, schoolwork, and diary entries to provide immediate views of what the war did to them and meant to them. The horror is lightened, a little, by stories of amazing resilience.

It is pathetic to read about children trying simply to be children in these monstrous circumstances. A five-year-old comforted her doll: "Don't cry, my little doll. When the Germans come to grab you, I won't leave you," and she wiped the doll's tears away. Another girl writes not about her own sufferings, but that of her doll, who was ripped open by SS goons when she was on her way to Auschwitz and then lost in the tumult of the camp's infamous ramp. A German girl fleeing from her home remembered hiding her doll along with the valuables of the family, and another sought comfort in her doll when the rest of her house had been destroyed. Children could not stop playing. Children of all sides hated their enemies, but also envied those in power. Polish boys acted roles as Gestapo officers, and Jewish boys played at being SS officials or ghetto guards rounding up prisoners or searching for contraband. There was a game of gas chamber, in which children threw stones into a hole in the ground and imitated the cries of the people within. German children in the last days pretended to be Russian soldiers with machine guns. Jewish kids made fun of death, daring each other to touch their camp's electrified fence. When the crematorium chimney emitted white smoke, the joke was, "This time it's fat people." A pediatrician once saw three boys playing horse and driver in the Warsaw ghetto; the only time they noticed a dead or dying child was when his body got caught up in their reins.

Stargardt's ambitious book does not end with capitulation, but examines how Germany and its young people came to terms with what their nation had wrought during the war. Adults burned their old uniforms, but many of them had been through changes of governments and accepted the inevitability of such change. The children and teenagers had known nothing else but the righteousness of the Nazi movement. The moment when children "had to tear off their Hitler Youth badges and throw away their daggers was often particularly bitter and undermined all they had ever been taught about duty, obedience, and honor." The readjustments would be hard, and in many cases never complete. This is a meticulous book, though a heartbreakingly sad one. It has a few stories that show that young people were resourceful in stealing or smuggling food for their families. Among the most uplifting parts are stories of rebellious youth, girls who risked being sent to reform schools because they liked staying out late against all the reproaches of their elders and peers, German teens who celebrated English swing music and rebelled by dressing in English fashion, kids who insisted on taking joyrides on stolen bicycles, or the "Navahos" or "Edelweiss Pirates" who formed youth gangs in opposition to the Hitler Youth. There are only a few such stories here. As the twenty-first century seems as if it will be no more free of war than the twentieth, let _Witnesses of War_ remind us of what war is really about.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A different perspective on the effects of life under the Nazis, June 22, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis (Hardcover)

WITNESSES OF WAR: CHILDREN'S LIVES UNDER THE NAZIS is a riveting, involving survey which uses original material from children's schoolwork, diaries, letters from evacuation camps and more to recreate the child perception and experience during the war. Many of these children had to take over when parents couldn't: their stories provide a different perspective on the effects of life under the Nazis, and should be added to the chronicles of any serious Holocaust representation.

Diane C. Donovan

California Bookwatch

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unbelievable, June 3, 2006

By 

Kathylene Privitera (Augusta, WV United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Witnesses of War: Children's Lives Under the Nazis (Hardcover)

This book was one of many I have read about Nazi inhumanity. The difference is that this one was centered on children. I was so astonished to read about the cruel and inhumane way the Nazis treated their own children that did not "conform" to the current political climate. My question, after reading this book is, are the traits that the German people seem to have had during the Nazi period part of the human condition, or part of Europe, or part of the first part of the 20th century, or what?? Is it in all of us to act and react as the people described in this book? This book is a MUST READ for anyone trying to understand the authoritarian, parochial and nationalistic actions of the Nazis and all Germans during the third reich.