Feuerdörfer

For the first time in 50 years, in German: survivors report on the Wehrmacht's crimes in Belarus. Here, eyewitnesses who survived the massacres in the Belarusian "fire villages" during World War II share their accounts. Ales Adamowitsch, Janka Bryl, and Uladsimir Kalesnik have tracked them down across the country and recorded their memories on tape. Carefully framed and organized into chapters, their voices create a condensed narrative in choral polyphony that goes far beyond a mere collage. For the first time, the unparalleled atrocities of the Wehrmacht in Belarus are fully acknowledged, capturing the human suffering while paving the way for something like a new beginning, for a future. This book is alarmingly relevant against the backdrop of current wars and anti-democratic developments, shedding light on a "blind spot" in German history. "One day, I came across the book 'Fire Villages.' I had only experienced such a shock once before while reading Dostoevsky. The narrative consists of voices of life, of what I heard in my childhood, what is said today on the street, at home, in cafes, on buses. Ales Adamowitsch became my teacher..." Swetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. "A milestone in the literary-documentary treatment of the traumas from World War II." Nina Weller, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research.