This volume is a translation from the Hungarian original published by Ab Ovo in 2003 under the title Mint tanu szólni: Bori történet [Speaking as a witness: a story from Bor]. While the title of the Hungarian original situates Andai’s memoir from the beginning on the one hand as witnessing and on the other in the line of other publications inspired by the forced labour camp Bor in Serbia,1 the title of the Canadian English-language translation addresses a readership that may be less familiar with the particular story of the Bor camp, yet able to identify with the broader historical context of the Holocaust and World War II.Andai’s memoir weaves in the author’s later acquired knowledge as a historian and teacher in Canada as he interprets the facts of history for his protagonist, his younger self, to whom he refers as a “simpleton” at the beginning of his odious journey. He repeatedly emphasizes that his narrative is an homage to the great Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti and to the numerous other friends he met, many of whom he lost, in his community of fate during the months of forced labour in the camps around Bor in war-torn Serbia. Indeed, the numerous intertextual references to Radnóti and his poems take up a central place in the memoir. However, the narrative should be read as Andai’s own literary creation rather than simply an homage.The literary qualities of this memoir in no way undermine its documentary value. Numerous references to historical events—most notably those in which the author documents the incredible brutality of the Yugoslav theatre of war—in addition to geographic and temporal details (sometimes even as precise as specifying the day of the week and time of the day or the weather) testify to the latter while reflecting the author’s academic training as a historian. At the same time, the historian is aware of the limits of memory, as formulated in the epilogue: “My stored-up memories have become hazy with the passage of time. They have become distorted and there are probably some inaccuracies as well” (186). It is important to understand that narratives that have grown out of traumatic experiences and rely on traumatic memories elide a simple dichotomy of truth versus falsehood. What such narratives capture are rather the ways in which an affected person interprets his or her past and the intensity of the loss.This memoir is thus first and foremost a narrative of trauma, a trauma mostly expressed as a collective experience that becomes etched onto the prisoners’ bodies through forced labour, beatings, hunger, thirst, or the bugs that suck their blood at night. According to the author, however, worse than the physical trauma is psychological trauma, the constant presence of the fear of death, listening to the “sound of the death rattle” that wakes them up at night (23–24). Toward the end of the narrative, particularly after young Ferenc finds out about the brutal death of his fellow prisoners, including his much-admired teacher and inspiration Radnóti, he becomes traumatized to the point of suffering from nightmares and being plagued by survivor’s guilt. As stated in the last paragraph, decades later he still hears the screams of the fellow prisoners, only a handful of whom survived—and they “could fit in the shadow of a plum tree” (187). The narrative ends here, followed by Andai’s daughter, Diana Andai’s afterword in which she briefly relates her father’s arrival in Budapest in April 1945 and her newlywed parents’ emigration to Canada prompted by the 1956 Hungarian revolution.Literature and art take up an important part in the memoir through numerous intertextual references that reflect the classical education of the author (i.e., Goethe, Virgil, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Dante, and Racine, to mention but a few). Yet more importantly, to the protagonist and his fellow prisoners, literature and art offer a source of solace and respite from the hell they have to endure. In the literary circle that forms around Radnóti in the camp they recite poems by Endre Ady, Dezső Kosztolányi, Attila József, and János Arany, and young Ferenc becomes acquainted with contemporary poets and artists like Aragon, Cocteau, or Gyula Illyés. He learns about dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, and Hungarian avant-garde poet and artist Lajos Kassák, things his classical education would not have included. When he flees the Nazi attack on the Serbian village of Kučevo and crawls in the forest “like a lizard” (135) to save his life, it is Russian literature that comes to his mind and gives him strength to face this particular ordeal without losing hope.Andai’s passion for literature also shows in his narrative style. The descriptions of horror and suffering are interspersed with poetic passages from the beginning of the memoir. Thus, the first images of herding the prisoners into cattle cars are mixed with impressions from the Serbian mountains with their “wild forests, rocky cliffs, valleys bursting with wildflowers” (1). But irony creeps in when Andai adds that they are obviously not there to admire the landscape in this “tourist paradise.” This juxtaposition of traumatic memories with literary and poetic sections reflects the resilience of the author and his young protagonist.One interesting aspect of the memoir that I would like to highlight is the representation of the different national and ethnic groups. Andai represents the Serbs and the Partisans in very positive, albeit slightly idealized, terms as fearless, smiling, confident, proud, intrepid freedom fighters, including women fighters as well. He recounts only good experiences in his encounters with both the Serbian civilian population and the Partisans, finding them very helpful and kind, even as they themselves face scarcity of food and terrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis and their helpers. They save his life on several occasions, and he even learns some Serbian to be able to communicate with them. More ambiguous is the representation of the Soviets. While he expects a lot of them, considering them “liberators,” his first encounter with a Soviet soldier is shocking, as he is told off as a “dirty Jew.” The proverbial drunkenness and utter unpredictability of the Soviets seen in numerous World War II memoirs and historical accounts is also present in this narrative. The most negative representation, however, is given to the Hungarian guards (with a few exceptions) and the Nazis. The guards are essentially brutal sadists while Nazi Germany is referred to as a “morphine addict” that is exploiting Serbian copper for its war. Andai completely reverses the antisemitic representation of the Jews as “vermin” slated to be exterminated. Many of the prisoners are from the cream of Hungary’s intelligentsia—highly educated, refined, and artistic men. The animalistic representation is instead reserved for the sadistic, cruel, power-blind, spiritually debased, and cowardly Hungarian guards. They do not speak a human language; instead they “bark” or “howl” like mad dogs.The high quality of the translation deserves special mention. The chapters of the Hungarian original were broken up into shorter sections that are thematized around particular episodes. Furthermore, an introduction by Robert Rozett, Senior Historian at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, as well as the aforementioned afterword by Diana Andai, a glossary, and an index were added. Two postcards written by Andai are also included, a number of photographs of Andai and his family, both from Hungary and from Canada, and several photographs of Andai with his work colleagues in Quebec and during official ceremonies in Hungary and in Canada. It is noteworthy that while the Hungarian original includes only two photographs, one of Andai following his liberation from the camp in the fall of 1944 (also reproduced in the translation) and one of Miklós Radnóti with his wife Fanni, no photograph of Radnóti is featured in the translation. Instead, there is a photograph of Andai and Radnóti’s widow Fanni from 2000 in Budapest, with a bust of Miklós between them. I would interpret this visual omission of an emphasis on Radnóti himself in the translated edition of the memoir as an attempt to move away from its homage aspect and to highlight Andai, the author, more.While this is a memoir with an important documentary value and at the same time a beautifully written literary text, it is above all a powerful reflection on the human condition, with important philosophical questions raised about the meaning and devastating effects of wars, about human psychology and behaviour in extreme situations, and about chance and fate. It is also, first and foremost, about lessons to be learned from the past and taught to future generations.