by Mary Adams, AWC The Hague
Author Alicia Partnoy was a featured speaker for the Human Rights Book Discussion in February 2026. Her book, The Little School, is a rare first-hand account of brutality during Argentina’s military dictatorship. The book is widely regarded as an important testimonial work: a human story of survival, identity and memory.
Forced disappearances constitute a systematic and heinous crime characterized by secrecy and official denial. In most cases, there is no information about the circumstances of the disappeared person other than the last place where she or he was seen in freedom, and the anguish of the relatives and friends of not knowing the fate of a loved one. Alicia Partnoy was “disappeared.” She is a survivor of kidnapping, unlawful detention and torture during the 1976–1983 dictatorship in Argentina.
The book does not rely on a single first-person voice; instead, it unfolds through a shifting third-person perspective interwoven with dialogue and poetry. Its chapters extend beyond Alicia’s personal suffering to amplify the voices of fellow captives, many of whom were tortured alongside her, and many ultimately silenced by death. The Little School recreates its historical period by weaving together the diverse voices that defined her reality. This memory of truth transforms her testimony into a collective act of witness of human rights violations.
As a reader, an important aspect for me was that she spent five months blindfolded. She only saw a fragment of something or some person. It was through these fragments that she not only created a story, but a history. As a poet, I would like to join Alicia under the blindfold and examine the fragments and transform the disappeared to “re-appeared.”
The Blindfold
Alicia has testified about her experiences at the United Nations, Amnesty International and CONADEP (the Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), and continues to campaign against human rights violations. Memory. Truth. Justice.
Alicia Partnoy’s books are published in English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Turkish, and Bangla.
