Last Walk in Naryshkin Park

Naryshkin Park is a place where lovers once walked. On 2 October 1941 it became the site of a mass grave. Rose Zwi deftly weaves together clues from survivors’ accounts, old photographs, official documents and archival research to form a many-layered account of the proud history and tragic destruction of the Jews of Lithuania.

‘It’s a moving, vital, devastating and inspiring work.’ —Gleebooks Gleaner

‘Rose Zwi... is a gifted writer and Last Walk is a significant contribution to the record of the event … This contribution to the personal history of the Holocaust is invaluable. Last Walk is not a book to be enjoyed. It is only to be treasured.’ —Joe Podbray, Financial Mail (South Africa)

‘It is compelling reading and the imagery so vivid that one is transported...’ —Alan Torrance, Chadashot

‘Rose Zwi’s book is brilliantly written... and raises the issues in the context of her pilgrimage. She does not seek our sympathy, only our understanding. We have to accompany her on her journey to do so.’ —Peter Mann, Otago Daily Times

‘Her book unfolds with a novelist’s sense of drama and is full of arresting detail, vividly describing a place which is haunted by tragedy but no longer evocative of her parents’ daily life.’ —Matthew Reisz Jewish Chronicle, UK

‘The lightness of her touch and her transparent desire to heal rifts between people, make her a powerful advocate.’ —Miriam Cosic, Australian Review of Books

. . . a well-written and painstaking account of the extermination of her family and culture, in the context of the present. Zwi succeeds in creating an intimate portrait out of the mass graves, of which Naryshkin Park is but one of thousands littered across Europe. – Frank Campbell, The Australian

The strength of Last Walk lies in the impeccably detailed piecing together of the Zhager story . . . the writing is fluent, the dialogue engaging . . . Yehuda Svoray, – The Australian Jewish News