http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/ This area is for the discussion and review of particular works of non-fiction. en Tue, 21 May 2013 09:24:08 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/misc/rss.png http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/ http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/59814-How-Poles-Helped-Germans-to-Murder-Jews?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 14:27:20 GMT My comments on this extraordinary Polish book are at: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/glicz.html Please share this link with those who might be interested, especially with your Polish friends. My comments on this extraordinary Polish book are at:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/glicz.html

Please share this link with those who might be interested, especially with your Polish friends. ]]> Non-Fiction kowalskil http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/59814-How-Poles-Helped-Germans-to-Murder-Jews http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/59637-Svetlana-Alexievich-War-s-Unwomanly-Face?goto=newpost Thu, 09 May 2013 19:00:22 GMT Svetlana Alexievich writes:

„During the most terrible war of the 20th century a woman had to become a soldier. She not only rescued and bandaged the wounded; she also fired a sniper's rifle, dropped bombs, blew up bridges, went reconnoitering, and captured identification prisoners. A woman killed.
She killed the enemy who, with unprecedented cruelty, was attacking her land, her home, her children. One of the heroines of the book, trying to convey all the horror and the cruel necessity of what had happened, says: "Woman was never destined to kill." Another woman wrote the following on the wall of the Reichstag: "I, Sofia Kuntsevich, came to Berlin to kill war." Woman thus made tremendous sacrifices to bring about Victory and at the same time they accomplished an immortal feat whose magnitude we can grasp only gradually in time of peace.”

"After my insistent requests [the husband] reluctantly gave up the spotlight with the words [to his wife], "Tell everything the way I taught you. Without tears and girly insignificant stuff: I wanted to be beautiful, I cried when they cut off my hair". Later, she confessed to me, whispering, "All night, he was studying the 'History of the Great Patriotic War' with me. He was worried about me. And he's afraid now that I will remember the wrong thing. That I will tell it not the way I'm supposed to."This happened many times, in many different homes.
Yes, they cry a lot. They scream. After I leave, they swallow their heart pills. Call the ambulance. But they keep asking me, "Please, come. Definitely come. We've been silent for so long. We were silent for forty years..."

The book consists of testimonies of hundreds of women. Alexievich found them and recorded what they had to say.

"At the age of nineteen I had a medal "For courage". At the age of nineteen, my hair turned grey. At the age of nineteen in my last battle I was shot through both lungs, the bullet went in between two vertebrae. My legs were paralysed... They thought I was dead... At the age of nineteen... My granddaughter is this age now. I look at her in disbelief. Such a child!"

"When the war was over, I wished for three things: first - I finally will not have to crawl around on my belly but will ride in a trolleybus, second - to buy and eat an entire loaf of white bread, and third - to sleep in a white bed, on crispy sheets. White sheets..."

"Once, during exercises... I cannot help crying when I think of this. It was spring. We had finished firing practice and were walking back. I picked a small bunch of violets and attached it to the bayonet of my rifle, and I was walking along like that. "We came to the camp. Our commander made us form up and called me out. I stepped forward, forgetting about the violets on the rifle. He began scoffing at me. 'A soldier's a soldier, and not a flower picker..,' It seemed strange to him that one could think about flowers in a situation like that. "However, I didn't throw the flowers away. I took them quietly off the rifle and put them in my pocket. I was punished fort his and had to do three extra spells of duty. Another time, when I was at my post and my replacement came at two o'clock in the morning, I wouldn't go off duty. 'I'll continue and you can relieve me for the daytime,' I said. I was wring to stay there all night long, till daybreak, just to be able to hear the birds sing.”

"Our scouts captured a German officer. He was greatly surprised that so many soldiers had been put out of action in his lines, all of them exclusively with head wounds. 'A simple marksman,' he said, 'would be incapable of such an accurate shooting. Show me,' he asked, 'the marksman who had killed so many of my soldiers. I had received great reinforcements and been losing up to ten people a day.' The regiment commander said, 'Regrettably, I cannot meet your request: it was a young girl sniper and she was killed.' It was Sasha Shlyakhova. She was killed in a sniper duel, betrayed by her red scarf. She was very fond of it. But a red scarf on the white snow is a very revealing thing. When the German officer heard that it had been a girl he hung his head, not knowing what to say... „

"Our uniforms were always covered with blood so that there were never enough clean ones for us. Senior Lieutenant Belov was the first wounded man rescued by me; the last was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970 he came on a visit to me and I showed my daughters the wound in his head-there was still a big scar there. In all, I rescued 481 wounded from under fire. One reporter calculated that I had rescued a whole rifle battalion!"

"In a German village we were billeted for a night in a castle. There were lots of rooms, real halls. What rooms they were! The wardrobes were full of pretty clothes. Each girl chose herself a dress. There was a yellow one I liked, and a dressing-gown, too, I can't describe to you how beautiful it was long and light... Feather-down. But we were terribly tired and it was time for bed... We put on the dresses we liked and immediately fell asleep. I went to bed in the dress, with the dressing-gown on top. In the morning we got up, took everything off and put on our field-shirts and trousers again. We didn't take anything with us. It was forbidden. You could take a spoon, that was all..."

An amazing and important book. I highly recommend it. ]]> Non-Fiction pesahson http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/59637-Svetlana-Alexievich-War-s-Unwomanly-Face