Children of Zion

the long version

In this book, 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 experiences during the war. Grynberg has not used the traditional form, but rather turns the voices of the children into one large "choral" group. This technique gives the reader the impression of overwhelming sameness while paradoxically featuring the subtle differences in the children's experiences. In the first section, the children recall their lives before the war (most were well off). They discuss their memories of when the war broke out, the arrival of the Germans and the Russians, and their journeys into and experiences in, exile. We also hear them talk about the increasingly desperate conditions after the Sikorski Agreement allowed them to leave the work camps, and the ways many of them coped as orphans.