UA News

John Garrard and his wife, Carol Garrard, have received a major honor for a book they co-authored about a prominent Soviet-era journalist.

The memory of Vasily Grossman, the Soviet-era Red Army’s leading war correspondent who interviewed soldiers and documented the Holocaust, had nearly been obliterated. 

But John Garrard, a University of Arizona Russian and Slavic studies department professor, began investigating the Nazi-occupied Soviet territory and Holocaust, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened to the world vast amounts of formerly sealed documentation.

Ultimately, Garrard began working alongside his wife, Carol Garrard, to amass information about Berdichev, where tens of thousands of Jews were killed during World War II. They also began collecting information about Vasily Grossman, the Soviet-era Red Army’s leading war correspondent who interviewed soldiers and documented the Holocaust.

What developed was a co-authored book – "The Bones of Berdichev: the Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman."

The book was recently named the recipient of the 2009 Giovanni Comisso Prize for the best biography published in the Italian language.

Just as the Pulitzer Prize in the United States and the Booker Prize in the United Kingdom are national awards, so too is the Comissio Prize, which offers prizes for both fiction and non-fiction. 

In his acceptance speech, John Garrard said: "Vasily Grossman has been recognized as one of the most important, and certainly the most neglected major authors of the 20th century." Grossman's name has also been spelled "Vasilij." 

Garrard, a Russian literature professor who has been with the UA since 1984, said Grossman's "story is terrifying, but it is essential reading for us in the 21st century, so that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past."

The award, announced during a celebration in Italy in Sept. 26, is considered one of the most important prizes for non-fiction biographical works in Italy.

The Garrards were the only authors this year to be nominated who are not Italian. The prize comes with a cash prize and a silver medallion. Also, the book will be placed in libraries throughout Italy. 

The book, originally published in 1996, was translated into Italian and released this year. Since its publication, it has inspired two documentaries. 

It was among 28 biographies considered this year for the Comissio Prize and is now being translated into Spanish to be released in Madrid next year, said Carol Garrard, an independent writer and editor.

The Garrards, who published another book last year titled "Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia," said the path toward the book's publication was an arduous one. 

John Garrard, who speaks French, learned to read and speak Russian while serving in a secret program with British Intelligence during his time at Cambridge University. His skills as an intelligence analyst were highly beneficial to the Garrards in their investigations.

In developing their co-authored book, the Garrards visited Europe and Russia to review documents stored in archives and also conducted interviews in Israel, Europe and Russia. John Garrard translated documents; Carol Garrard transcribed. Then, the two worked simultaneous writing and editing.

Their focus:  examine the murder of Soviet Jews in the occupied Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and ways that members of the Red Army were treated by the German Wehrmacht, Schutzstaffel, or the SS, and also the Soviet High Command.

Both issues were woefully underreported, and so Grossman was drawn to investigate what was happening. Yet his own government sought to silence him, labeling him a "non-person," the Garrards noted.  

"His books were swept from library shelves and pulped.  His manuscripts were 'arrested' by the KGB," Carol Garrard said.

"He himself was not touched, because of his nationwide fame as the Red Star's – the Red Army newspaper – leading war correspondent, the man present at all 100 days of the vicious street-fighting during the Battle of Stalingrad."

But, as Carol Garrard noted, members of the Communist Party were "determined to obliterate" all memory of Grossman. 

"Grossman tried to reveal the darkest secrets of the war on the Eastern front," Carol Garrard said. 

She noted that Grossman focused primarily on the "wastage" of Soviet soldiers at the command of their own officers, noting that he reported that some were sent to combat unarmed.

He also reported that the "overwhelming" number of civilians murdered by German killing squads were Jewish, and that some Soviets assisted in the killings. 

These reports infuriated the Communist Party line, "so Grossman has to be silenced."

The Garrards have since donated the copyright to their book to the Center for the Study of Grossman and the Battle of Stalingrad, which is located in Italy.