🧵 The most haunting, awful description of the Holocaust in Ukraine from Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate for #HolocaustMemorialDay .
Grossman’s hero, Viktor, receives a letter of parting from his mother, who is about to die.
Grossman’s hero, Viktor, receives a letter of parting from his mother, who is about to die.
Grossman’s own mother was killed by the Nazis in the town of Berdychiv, in Zhytomyr. He was tormented at the idea that he could or should have saved her.
At ten year intervals, until his death in 1964, Grossman wrote unsent letters to his mother, confessing his grief and describing his life and the past. They’re available in archives and they’re utterly tragic.
In Life and Fate, Grossman tries to show the enduring kindness of humanity as a remedy for the senseless destruction of totalitarianism throughout the 20th century.
I can’t read these pages without tearing up, but read them. Read and witness, because that’s why Grossman wrote them - even if it meant risking his neck with the Soviet regime.
If you know me and my work, you’ll know I’m obsessed with Grossman. He’s one of the greatest authors and thinkers of the 20th century. Life and Fate has so, so much to tell us about the past and what’s happening in the present.
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