INNOCENT WITNESSES

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.