When Grownups Play at War
A Child's Memoir
by Ilona Flutsztejn-Gruda
translated by Sarah Cummins

When Grownups Play at War is the unique, compelling memoir of a young Polish Jewish girl during the Second World War. In an authentic voice based on first-hand experience, Gruda gives us a rare perspective on the life of a family fleeing from Poland to Uzbekistan. Her account lays bare the trials of coming of age amidst the constant upheavals of her wartime years. Gruda conveys a sense of immediacy and humanity to her description of the daily realities of the wartime experiences of so many Jewish refugees on the eastern front. We travel beside her in train and cart, in bitter cold and dusty heat across war-torn Eastern Europe. With vivid, haunting strokes, she paints portraits of the people and cultures she comes to know along the way. Gruda writes through the eyes of a child with rare irony and painful honesty, allowing us an occasional glimpse of a sly sense of humour and revealing the wisdom of the adult she later became.