Children of Zion

In Children of Zion, Henryk Grynberg takes an extraordinary collection of interviews conducted by representatives of the Polish government-in-exile in Palestine in 1943 and arranges them in such a way that their voices become unforgettable. The interviewees--all Polish children--tell of their wartime experiences. Rather than using traditional form, Grynberg has turned their voices into a large "choral" group. The children recall their lives before the war (most were well off), their memories of the war's outbreak and the arrival of the Germans and Russians, and their experiences after leaving work camps and the ways many coped with their lives as orphans.

"It is the unvarnished, artless, and naÏve story of children who, to put it mildly, had no theory to defend." --Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, New Republic

"[A] powerful, relentless document that bears grim testimony to the suffering endured by the children and their families as they journeyed from horror to horror." --Library Journal