Question about very disturbing wartime book - probably WWII

February 25, 2023 11:44 PM

CW: infant murder

I read a book about a military invasion of a town, in Europe, quite possibly eastern Europe, probably in World War Two. Soldiers entered a family home and one of them swung an infant by the legs into a wall. What was the name of that book?

This has been in my mind for decades but I haven’t wanted to traumatize anyone else by talking about it. It’s not The Painted Bird.

posted by bendy to Human Relations (14 answers total)

I am not sure if there is another book that tells this story but there is a play by Edna St Vincent Millay that tells this story, called The Murder of Lidice. I was in the play in high school and I played the mother of that infant. It was incredibly affecting and I still think about it sometimes. Here's a link: The Murder of Lidice
posted by fairlynearlyready at 12:06 AM on February 26, 2023

I'm pretty sure this happens in Maus
posted by xueexueg at 12:40 AM on February 26, 2023

Response by poster: I remember it as text, not Maus.
posted by bendy at 1:32 AM on February 26, 2023

“The Unwomanly Face of War” by Svetlana Alexeivich?
posted by Balthamos at 1:53 AM on February 26, 2023

It's not World War II or Europe and it's not a wall, but in The Last of the Mohicans, infants get their heads dashed against rocks... Our discussion of that scene destroyed our book group. Not joking.
posted by jdroth at 7:21 AM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was the book fiction or non-fiction? If you last read it decades ago, could you be remembering a description of Khmer Rouge atrocities?
posted by drdanger at 7:51 AM on February 26, 2023

Best answer: (It is not depicted in Maus, it's a memory/story told by the father)
posted by Rat Spatula at 8:18 AM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

One of the more horrific (of many) crimes against humanity in WW2 was the

Nanjing Massacre /Nanking.

CW: yes, including pictures.
posted by Jacen at 8:37 AM on February 26, 2023

There was a diary of a teenage girl under Nazism that was published in the last twenty years. It was often compared to The Diary of Ann Frank.

I did not read the book, but a review describes a scene on the street where a young Nazi soldier takes an infant out of the hands of a Jewish woman and does this. The mother screams. I can provide more details if that would be helpful, but otherwise I won’t because they are truly horrible.

Sorry I don’t remember the name of the book, but it should be findable.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:05 AM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I am fairly certain a Holocaust survivor shared this story on a Reddit AMA. Like for you, the horrific details have been etched in my mind. I found several of these stories by googling "by the legs" and a few other keywords. Unfortunately this seems to have been a very common occurence :(
posted by Skybly at 9:10 AM on February 26, 2023

Best answer: I found the book. It's Rutka's Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust. Here is the New York Times review with the description of the infanticide. (Content Warning: horrible inhumanity.)
posted by Winnie the Proust at 10:08 AM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Please note that I am not denying that this ever happened, but it's also a historical trope of the horrors of war. It's in Henry V, for example:

"Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes..."

So you may or may not have read it in an actual historical account.
posted by praemunire at 12:12 PM on February 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: The image I remember does sound like the one described in Rutka’s Notebook though I don’t remember the book. I’m sure I read it in Maus too.

I think just learning that it was a “common occurrence” makes me realize that it’s not really important where I found it.

Thank you all for your help and for going down unforgettable, undeniable, ugly alleys of history to answer.
posted by bendy at 6:56 PM on February 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

A version of this also happens in The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick, just on the off chance that's where you encountered it.
posted by superfluousm at 8:32 AM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]