Children of Zion
Encyclopedia
Henryk Grynberg
Henryk Grynberg is a Polish-Jewish writer and actor who survived the Nazi occupation. He was an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, playwright and essayist who had authored more than thirty books of prose and poetry and two dramas...
about “the fate of the Polish Jews”.
Synopsis
The Children of Zion, published in January 1998, is considered as a documentaryDocumentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
that was based on a collection of fragments of records compiled in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in 1943 by the Eastern Center for Information, a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
government group. The book was a source of the testimonies of Jewish children who were evacuated from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to Palestine. Grynberg arranged the “collection of interviews” to serve as a reminder about the Holocaust experience. The Polish children’s experiences during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
also provided a recollection of their lives before the war. Memories of when the war broke out were also discussed, apart from the “arrival of the Germans and the Russians”, the children’s journeys and life while in exile, and their condition after the so-called Sikorsky Agreement allowed them to leave the work camps. Many of the children had to cope as orphaned émigrés. The original document that had become the basis for Grynberg’s Children of Zion is at the Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
of Leland Stanford Junior University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
Identities of the children
Grynberg's Children of Zion contains the original list of the Polish children who arrived in Eretz IsraelLand of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
"on February 18th, 1943, those who arrived in August 1943, and those who gave the testimonies". These children escaped from occupied Poland to Russia prior to arriving at Eretz Israel (Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
).
Translations
Grynberg's book was originally published in PolishPolish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
as Dzieci Syjonu (Warszawa: Karta) in 1994. It was later translated into Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
by Zeev Shos (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem) in 1995. Grynberg’s Children of Zion was translated into English by Jacqueline Mitchell, a United Nations interpreter
United Nations Interpretation Service
The United Nations Interpretation Service is a part of the Meetings and Publishing Division of the UN's Department for General Assembly and Conference Management...
, and published by Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press
Northwestern University Press is the university press of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA.- History :Northwestern University Press was founded in 1893, at first specializing in legal periodicals. Today, the Press publishes scholarly books of fiction, non-fiction, and literary...
in 1998.