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The chapter introduces the reader to core themes of the book and lays out the fields it speaks to as well as the major arguments. It argues that Soviet nationality policy, the Nazi genocide, and post-Soviet transformations constitute a powerful framework for elderly Jewish women and men residing in the Soviet Union and its successor states to make sense of their lives. Beginning with the story of Frida Ped’ko and her sister, it discusses age, gender, and violence; memory, identity, and the state; and trauma, community, and reproductive labor, concluding that orphaned children and their everyday struggle for survival offer an important lens through which to understand the scope and force of Nazi terror.

The chapter focuses on the implications of living through occupation and genocide in Minsk, emphasizing individual and collective strategies of youth trapped in a ghetto of up to 55,000 people. Following several female and male adolescents, the chapter demonstrates that multinational relationships of Jews with former classmates, neighbors, or strangers, especially in response to the precarious situation of orphaned teenagers in a context of ongoing violence, were essential for people’s survival. Especially for orphans who were trapped in the ghetto of Minsk, struggling to find food, dealing with constant humiliation and violence, and coming to terms with previously unsuspected antisemitism and anti-Jewish attitudes among neighbors and strangers, the support networks organized by party members, union activists, or individual helpers, as well as strong bonds among ghetto inmates, proved crucial.

Picking up on the lives of Frieda Ped’ko, Grigorii Erenburg, and Alevtina Kuprikhina, who are introduced in chapter 1, the chapter sharpens the account of survival and destruction in Eastern Belorussia, and the implications of remembering both. Eastern Belorussian territories remained under military administration throughout the war; and they were the site of indiscriminate executions of civilians beginning in summer 1941. A number of children and young people were deprived of their closest relatives and tried to make sense of this loss, efforts that continue to fail in light of unbearable terror and violence. The resulting fragmentary narratives demonstrate the aftereffects of systematic violence and pose thorny questions for historical scholarship.