Girl: My Childhood and the Second World War

Seen through a small child's eyes, this memoir recalls a wartime girlhood spent out of sight. The Gestapo came close more than once, and her hiding games were never harmless: she lay under straw on a wagon, among pigs, in a pit scooped out beside a stove, in a box like a coffin that was also her bed, under heaps of old clothes, behind a cupboard door painted to pass for drawers. She changed names as often as hiding places. Shut away so long, she lost the habit of walking and talking, and could no longer weep, but she went on drawing pictures, inventing games and hoping for a friend. Only when the war was over did the tears come, and in a sense they have flowed underground ever since. Many decades on, the grown woman finally lets that watchful, invisible, lively little girl come out.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Nonfiction

Length

280 pages in the original

Genres

War, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Poland, Second World War

First published

2004 by Mapa

Author's age

67 when first published

ISBN

9780253022288 (Indiana University Press, United States)

9780253022356 (Indiana University Press, United States)