The Last Green Valley

The Last Green Valley explores how the brutality of war has a deep, abiding effect on civilians. The Martel family’s journey out of Ukraine under Nazi protection is marked by scenes of violence and devastation. The refugee caravan passes through many towns and villages destroyed during battle. Adeline is shocked by much of what they see, including “maimed corpses frozen in the grotesque positions in which they had died” (65). These scenes demonstrate that the devastation of war is never confined to soldiers.

The Volksdeutsche refugees find themselves consistently at risk of bodily harm and death as they escape Ukraine. The Martels are often forced to seek shelter to escape bombs and artillery fire; on the fourth day of their trek, as they hide in a culvert during another round of bombing, they “hear the shrieking of horses and the cries of those without shelter” (77). Several times, they barely escape surprise attacks by the Soviet armies. Living conditions during the journey increase the refugees’ suffering. Within just two weeks, exposure and disease wreak havoc on the caravan: “Not an hour passed when [the Martels] weren’t rolling by a wagon pulled off to the side of the route so survivors could bury their dead” (83).

The Martels experience several personal tragedies on their journey. When the caravan arrives at the train station in Romania, the refugees are forced to leave behind most of their possessions; a tearful Adeline cries, “They want us down to nothing, Emil, people with no pasts” (133). Even after their relocation to Poland, the Martels struggle to feed themselves as ration supplies dwindle. Adeline faces the prospect of selling her wedding ring to buy food.

Furthermore, The Last Green Valley demonstrates that the devastation of war does not end when war concludes. After the war ends in early May 1945, civilians and refugees alike still face threats of physical harm. In particular, women face a constant threat of sexual assault at the hands of Soviet soldiers. Thousands of Volksdeutsche men are captured by the Soviets and forced to labor in prison camps, regardless of their participation (or lack thereof) during the war. Disease and death are rampant in the Poltava prison camp where Emil is held. He watches every morning and evening as corpses are “loaded on the pony cart, and taken to be buried in a field near the woods at the edge of the ruined city” (285).

Finally, because the novel is set during World War II, multiple scenes depict the violence Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime. Early in the Martels’ journey out of Ukraine, Nikolas tells Emil about the massacre of Jewish people at the farm in Bogdanovka. According to Nikolas, it took them “eighteen days to shoot them all and twenty days more to boil or burn their clothes” (81). Emil’s flashbacks to his encounter with Major Haussmann in Dubossary reinforce the type of violence that Nikolas describes. Emil recalls being led into open country where hundreds of Jewish people were being murdered, “hearing more shots and then shouts and cries that with every step closer became the voices of innocence screaming for mercy” (215).