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Het Weeskind (2011)

by John Lahutsky(Favorite Author)

4.11 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

9022557405 (ISBN13: 9789022557402)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Boekerij

review 1: This was a heartbreaking and important book about a boy given to a Russian orphanage at a very young age. Diagnosed at birth with cerebral palsy, Vanya was considered ineducable and was left to languish in a single room in one of Moscow's baby houses (an orphanage for children under 5), never even going outside. He managed to teach himself to talk and longed for a connection with someone--anyone--but few connections were available. The view of the baby house presented in this book and backed up by various sources is bleak: a single woman is in charge of dozens of children for 24 hours at a stretch and won't or can't become too attached, medical care and physical therapy is available in theory but seldom used in practice, and anything of value (toys, meat, clothes) disap... morepears immediately. A few hand-selected children are fattened up to be "sold" to foreign adopters, but those considered unadoptable can expect to languish and slowly die without even learning how to walk. And this isn't an orphanage in Charles Dickens' England--this was going on in the late 1990s in Russia.At age 5, Vanya was considered too old for the baby house and was sent to the internat, a mental institution from which most children never return. As bad as the baby house was, the internat was even worse. Vanya was left in his caged bed all day, never even getting a chance to use the toilet. (The plastic sheets might be wiped down once a day, if he was lucky.) If it wasn't for some volunteers making a Herculean attempt to rescue Vanya ("the boy who can talk") from the jaws of the internat, he would still be there.Vanya's story ends happily. Some volunteers made connections and got him adopted in the United States, where he excelled at school and joined the Boy Scouts. But all those other children in Vanya's small world--my heart bleeds for them.This book makes me feel helpless. I want to rush over to Russia and adopt and love all the children in the baby houses. I want to be a volunteer and take the children outside once in a while, and take them to the toilet and make sure someone teaches them how to walk. Realistically, that's not going to happen. I'm going to tut-tut over this book and pray for the Russian orphans, and then go back to trying to do good things within my own sphere of influence. But books like this make my sphere of influence seem terribly small.
review 2: This is probably the most well-written true story I have ever read. Most true stories seem to be written without too much description relating to settings or character development. This book is different. It reads like fiction. And is true.I am amazed at this boy's (John) inner strength and appalled at the status quo in Russia regarding care of its little children. I'm not just appalled because I read this book...I also lived in Russia in 1995 and some of the things that frustrated me back then are the same issues that were brought up in the book. A few months ago, I found out about the shear volume (800,000) of orphans in Russia. It makes me sad knowing that if the State child welfare system were honorable at all levels (from caretakers to policy makers to judges granting adoptions) and especially if parents fought to keep their children that the level of suffering would decrease substantially. This story gives a serious witness to the consequences the family unit breakdown...and a society's breakdown of the family unit. Taking children out of Russia (adoption) is a short-term solution. One that is literally a matter of life and death for whoever escapes. But the real solution must be a shift in the attitudes of the Russian people and a higher value placed on the family. less

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