📗 "A Little Annihilation" by Anna Janko, translated from Polish into English by Philip Boehm
The news is making writing about books difficult at the moment. But here's an anti-war book I've been reading. I started it in early January and only finished it recently, taking frequent breaks between the heaviest chapters. Still, I doubt I'll read a better non-fiction book this year.
This book is the author collecting her mother's memories before she passes away, adding history and her own experiences with generational trauma onto it. It's more than that, but it's hard to categorize. It's mourning war and human cruelty, a reflection on how to go on knowing what atrocities people are capable of.
The author's mother was a small child in Poland during WWII. The Nazis killed everyone in her village, as was common then, by shooting and locking people in houses that were set on fire. She saw them shoot her parents. She and her two younger siblings were about to get shot, but one of soldier's pushed the gun down of the soldier who was getting ready to kill them. She fled with her two younger siblings before anyone could change their mind about letting some children live.
I think about that hand movement of the Nazi soldier a lot. Couldn't he handle seeing three children get killed in front of him? He must have seen it a lot already. He pushed the barrel down. Let's ignore these kids, let's go. That one movement, and three people lived, who went on to have lives and children of their own, who went on to live and create a book like this one. One act of disobedience, rippling outwards, making such a huge change to one family tree.
This book is really upsetting. It tells a lot about WWII in Poland and some of Eastern Europe, things that are often left out in texts written in Western Europe. The information is dire and it just is, without trying to force some meaning, lesson or positive perspective onto the reader. Instead it starts to build a road with you: how can we live, knowing what we know?
The book is also about other wars and killings that have happened since then, and that keep happening. It's part memoir, about how war lives on in the most negative of ways, scarring generations. It's about how citizens always lose in a war, becoming victims in the name of this or that while just trying to survive.
This book is constantly in the forefront of my mind, especially the last few days. I've seen people defend the attacks on Iran because they claim a regime change was necessary. What the hell are you saying, I want to ask. Citizens are dying. In their homes, on the streets, in schools, in hospitals, they suffer and die. Real people, like you and me. Full lives cut short by suffering and death. Who are you to say this or that is necessary or justifiable, sitting cozy at home with a hot drink while others are paying the price for the bombs our western governments are dropping and supporting. You need a reality check. You need to read a book like this one and come to your senses. You need to stop making excuses for war and learn to fear what people are capable of putting each other through. Fuck.
