Last Witnesses
An Oral History of the Children of World War II
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Narrated by:
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Julia Emelin
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Allen Lewis Rickman
About this listen
"A masterpiece" (The Guardian) from the Nobel Prize-winning writer, an oral history of children’s experiences in World War II across Russia
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post
For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the 20th century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre," describing her work as "a history of emotions...a history of the soul."
Bringing together dozens of voices in her distinctive style, Last Witnesses is Alexievich’s collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded - a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation.
Collectively, this symphony of children’s stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals.
Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the 20th century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.
Praise for Last Witnesses
"There is a special sort of clear-eyed humility to [Alexievich’s] reporting." (The Guardian)
"A bracing reminder of the enduring power of the written word to testify to pain like no other medium.... Children survive, they grow up, and they do not forget. They are the first and last witnesses." (The New Republic)
"A profound triumph." (The Big Issue)
"[Alexievich] excavates and briefly gives prominence to demolished lives and eradicated communities.... It is impossible not to turn the page, impossible not to wonder whom we next might meet, impossible not to think differently about children caught in conflict." (The Washington Post)
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Invisible Jews
- Surviving the Holocaust in Poland
- By: Eddie Bielawski
- Narrated by: Norman Gilligan
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Eddie Bielawski was born in the town of Wegrow in Poland in mid-1938. Not a propitious time and place for a Jewish child to be born. As a young child, he sees the Nazi army marching toward Russia. Day and night they marched - soldiers, trucks, tanks, and more soldiers, in a never-ending line - an invincible force. One night, his father had a dream. In this dream, he saw what he had to do: where to build the bunker, how to build it, and even its dimensions. This would be their Noah's Ark, saving them from the initial deluge.
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Surviving not the camps, but being in hiding!
- By Logophile on 04-26-18
By: Eddie Bielawski
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
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Remember Us
- My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust
- By: Vic Shayne, Martin Small
- Narrated by: Peter Altschuler
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.
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A Tragic and Rich Life, With Lessons For All
- By still reading on 03-17-16
By: Vic Shayne, and others
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The Nine
- The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
- By: Gwen Strauss
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a 10-day journey across the front lines of World War II from Germany back to Paris. Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.
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Soooo good!
- By anne simpson on 09-28-21
By: Gwen Strauss
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Roman's Journey
- An Extraordinary Odyssey of Holocaust Survival
- By: Roman Halter
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Roman Halter was a spirited, optimistic schoolboy in 1939 when he and his family gathered behind the curtains to watch the Volksdeutsche (German Polish) neighbors of their small town in western Poland greet the arrival of Hitler's armies with kisses and swastika flags. Within days, the family home had been seized, 12-year-old Roman had become a slave of the local SS chief, and, returning from an errand, he silently witnessed his Jewish classmates being bayoneted to death by soldiers at the edge of town. So began his remarkable six-year journey through some of the darkest caverns of Nazi Europe....
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Could not finish!!!!
- By Natalie Rohde on 02-23-16
By: Roman Halter
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My Friend Anne Frank
- The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds
- By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, Dina Kraft
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1933, Hannah Pick-Goslar and her family fled Nazi Germany to live in Amsterdam, where she struck up a close friendship with her next-door neighbor, an outspoken and fun-loving young girl named Anne Frank. For several years, the inseparable pair enjoyed a carefree childhood of games, sleepovers, and treats with the other children in their neighborhood of Rivierenbuurt. But in 1942, Hannah and Anne's lives abruptly changed forever.
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the missing piece to Anne’s story and the complete picture of Hannah’s
- By Wilson on 07-13-23
By: Hannah Pick-Goslar, and others
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The Latehomecomer
- A Hmong Family Memoir
- By: Kao Kalia Yang
- Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.
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Great Hmong history, lousy literature
- By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18
By: Kao Kalia Yang
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My Family's Survival
- The True Story of How the Shwartz Family Escaped the Nazis and Survived the Holocaust
- By: Aviva Gat
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu, Neil Hellegers
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1937, the Shwartz family lived a calm life in their small village in Poland. Fifteen-year-old Rachel liked to sing and go out dancing at a local night club, while her older brother David was busy running a farm and raising a family with his wife Hinda. But all that changed when the war reached Butla. First, the Russians came and kicked them out of their house. Then, the Nazis came to cart them off. But the Shwartz family resisted. David decided that no matter what, his family would not be taken captive. Instead, he snuck his family out of their village and into Hungary.
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One of the best!
- By Ian on 08-11-20
By: Aviva Gat
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America Is in the Heart
- By: Carlos Bulosan, Elaine Castillo - foreword, E. San Juan Jr. - introduction, and others
- Narrated by: Ramon de Ocampo
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.
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Pointless, wandering narrative poorly performed
- By B. Bartok on 08-15-20
By: Carlos Bulosan, and others
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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Into the Forest
- A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love
- By: Rebecca Frankel
- Narrated by: Natalie Pela
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy, where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States.
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Great story with an added benefit
- By Scottsville Stu on 12-30-21
By: Rebecca Frankel
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One of Ours
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Louis B. Jack
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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This is One of Ours, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Willa Cather, America’s greatest writer of the prairie heartland. It is set in rural Nebraska in the early 20th century prior to the first World War that enveloped Europe and eventually the United States. The story focuses on the young Claude Wheeler, a well-to-do farmer’s son who secretly longs for something to take him away from the hum-drum agrarian life he has inherited. As he prepares to take over his family’s farm business, war intrudes.
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Opened my heart
- By georgette bartell on 06-28-19
By: Willa Cather
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
What listeners say about Last Witnesses
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Robert Krabill
- 10-15-21
Breathtaking in beauty and heartache.
Voices marvelous. Stories otherworldly. SA coaxes deep confessions from buried corners of the soul. These old ones carry stories we all must hear. May we not have to reenact them.
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- Amy Morel
- 10-10-21
Deep history, questionable execution
I wish the narrators didn’t try to mimic Russian accents, pretty cringe. Great stories as always.
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- Darwin8u
- 09-16-21
And how many years to forget?
"I remember the war in order to figure it out…Otherwise why do it?"
- Nadia Gorbacheva, age 7
"My childhood ended…with the first gunshots. A child still lived inside me, but now alongside someone else…"
- Efim Friedland, age 9
"There was shooting for four years…And how many years to forget?"
- Katya Zayats, age 12
"We are the last witnesses. Our time is ending. We must speak… Our words will be the last…"
- Valya Brinskaya, age 12
In The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, Svetlana Alexievich looked at WW2 through the eyes of the women who survived/fought in/lived through it. Using the same polyphonic, oral history, vignette approach Alexievich tells the story (mostly in Belarus) of the children who survived/lived through/(and yes) fought in it.
The insights are sad, horrible, and also revealing and brutal in their horror and beauty. There is absolutely the WORST of humanity witnessed by these children and told in their retirement years to a historian, but beside those stories, imbedded in these remembrances of war a flower occasionally blooms that reminds the reader of both the dark and the light we float between. There are communities pulling together, mothers doing extraordinary things for their children, mothers created out of need, neighbors helping neighbors, sacrifices made by children to carry the burdens of others. I cried multiple times. I had to consume it slowly. It was amazing history. Too often we are fed the strategies and the geopolitical players in war, but Alexievich inverts that. She is granular. She feeds the reader the reality of war, as experienced and remembered, by the most vulnerable. We need more mothers. We need less war.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Sandra
- 08-02-24
Valuable memories
The honesty of childhood recollections of a tragic era is presented in short vignettes that are totally engaging.
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- J.Brock
- 08-10-20
Simply Horrifying
To listen to Svetlana Alexievich's beautiful work is to be stunned into speechlessness. The stories of Russian children who survived WWII in the form of an oral history is just too much to take in. One theme that resounds is how these children we're so traumatized that they simply were incapable of emotion. One never tires of these stores because they NEED to be told over and over again. As our world makes moves toward totalitarianism, one needs to hear the stories of those who lived through it. How any of these children survived starvation, watching their parents and others being killed in front of them in the most brutal ways, and other atrocities defies all logic. May were orphaned and left to their own devices. It's incredible. What a breathtaking work.
The dual narration works here beautifully. Julia Emelin and Allen Lewis Rickman's narration is perfection.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jennifer Allred
- 08-25-20
superb
I learned so much and heard such horrendous stories that affected the lives of those children that I will never forget. I highly recommend this recording.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Victoria
- 07-19-19
Amazing story, full of emotion and history
I love this audio book, more than I could have ever imagined. So many things I never thought about from war - how children view what happens, the fact that no one has a papa anymore. I loved the stories about children getting new mama's and papa's because theirs had died and people wanted to care for them. Even stories of orphanages that had the kindest workers and afforded children a happy life that they thought couldn't exist anymore. Some stories had happy endings, many did not - but I loved that too in a sad and sincere way. I cried so much from this book, learned a lot, and feel a new sense of appreciation for bread.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 04-03-22
Great story but...
The performance is unbearable. No need for accents and theatrics, just let the story speak for itself.
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