WAR STORIES

A collection of narratives about the costs of conflict, inside and outside of war.

Seifer presents a varied collection of testimonies about survival, perseverance, and decision-making in the face of combat, conflict, and persecution. Following a brief introduction that identifies the overarching theme of the collection as “honesty of perspective,” contributor Deb Aubin describes gaining a better sense of her father’s World War II service through an examination of the documents and artifacts she inherited after his death. Noel Gurewitch recounts learning about how his father’s decision to disobey an order while serving in India during WWII is still remembered and honored by the University of Calcutta today. The Vietnam War is represented by a chapter from Nelson DeMille’s novel Up Country (2002), in which an American veteran returns to the site of the Battle of Khe Sanh with a former North Vietnamese officer. John D’Angelo discusses continuing efforts to expose the truth about American prisoners of war, describing the mystery surrounding the fate of serviceman Roger Dumas, declared missing in action during the Korean War. Autobiographical narratives comprise the bulk of the collection. Seifer’s father, Stanley, recounts his childhood in Toronto and his eventual entry into the U.S. Navy in 1943, and Seifer himself shares a selection of correspondence between his parents and their friends during the Second World War. Harry Adler describes in engaging detail his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe via Morocco and Portugal and his experiences as a private first class in the Civil Affairs Section of the Fifth Corps Headquarters, engaged in planning and participating in the D-Day invasion.

The standout works come from Ella Adler and Helena Mia Weinrauch. In their separate accounts, the two Holocaust survivors describe the brutality, hunger, and indignities of concentration camps in harrowing detail, including Auschwitz and Plaszow, as well as the casual cruelty and small acts of compassion they experienced from neighbors and strangers in the first months of Nazi occupation. With grace and empathy, both women describe struggling with a loss of faith in God and their fellow human beings, and reflect on the personal resilience and strength which contributed to their survival: “So, miracles, the warm memories of my family and above all, hope was my salvation.” Ella Adler’s and Weinrauch’s narratives, as well as the reminiscences of Henry Adler, deserve a wide readership. However, the other pieces in this collection fail to earn their places beside these detailed and moving memoirs. Some suffer from a lack of depth or context, and others feel jarringly out of place, including an article adapted by Seifer from a book about two doctors who advocated for the use of ozone therapy during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and S.M.J. Alt’s narrative of judicial corruption in Ohio. Although the introduction prepares readers for alternative “war stories,” noting that not all conflict “happens on the battlefield,” these pieces are simply too far afield in scope, tone, and subject to sit comfortably alongside Adler’s and Weinrauch’s devastating Holocaust recollections.

A sometimes-compelling but unbalanced set of essays that lacks topical and emotional cohesion.