Innocent Witnesses

Marilyn Yalom's books include classics of cultural history such as A History of the Wife, Birth of the Chess Queen, and How the French Invented Love. A former professor of French, she was a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She lived in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom.

"In Innocent Witnesses, history and memory waltz in step and strain and part. Marilyn Yalom displays her talent for bringing together stories remembered, filtered by the innocence of childhood. She brilliantly draws us into the lives of these ordinary children living in an extraordinary time."—Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz "World War II spawned tales of horror as well as heroics. The memories of war captured in Innocent Witnesses are bathed in the guileless luminosity of childhood. They will be among the last from those who lived it. These invariably touching tales offer poignant perspective on the twentieth century's most cataclysmic event."—David M. Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 "Marilyn Yalom's Innocent Witnesses offers a fresh, meaningful perspective on war trauma among children. Yalom's wise and sensitive framing brings the accounts of child survivors into vivid focus. She has not only made another meaningful historical and literary contribution, but assembled a book that is beautiful and haunting to read."—Alexandra Zapruder, author of Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust "In a feat of history-making, Marilyn Yalom convinced her friends, all children during World War II, to tell their stories. In Innocent Witnesses, they recall their childhoods in war with heartbreaking clarity. It is vital that we hear from those who were able to survive such trauma, and go on to live long creative lives."—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts "The experiences of these children, so sensitively portrayed, offer more than just insight into the tragic wartime history that determined their lives. Their stories serve as a mirror in which we must confront ourselves and the pain we are capable of inflicting on others. Innocent Witnesses compels us all to think about who we are and, most importantly, who we want to be."—Ronald Leopold, Executive Director, Anne Frank House "A life-repairing act of literary generosity, collecting and connecting diverse experiences into a narrative that is, in this particular moment in history, as necessary as it is inspiring."—Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Last Train to London "An ever timely account of the traumas that conflict imposes upon children and how they reverberate through time."—Kirkus Reviews "This timely and valuable book examines diverse vital stories and the vagaries of childhood memory reported at a substantially later age. This is an important imaginative exploration of our shared past."—Oliver B. Pollack, San Diego Jewish World "By pulling this rich and varied collection of memoirs together in one volume, Yalom has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the effects of war on children and the experiences of childhood in the Second World War."—Jennifer Craig-Norton, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth