Lodz Ghetto: 2a Community History Told in Diaries, Journals, and Documents

The diary fragments, letters, notebook entries and poems that make up this searing documentary were hidden beneath floorboards or in walls in the sealed-off ghetto of Lodz, Poland. There the Nazis forced over 200,000 Jews into slave labor before sending them to extermination camps. Trapped in a hell they had difficulty comprehending, the authors of these grim testimonials wrote of their struggle to hold onto family ties, hope, religion, life. They describe the Nazis' murders, the destruction of synagogues, the mass deportations. Many entries show contempt for autocratic Mordechai Rumkowski, whom the Nazis appointed ``King of the Jews'' to enforce obedience and carry out deportation orders. Photographs taken inside the ghetto, interwoven with the text, convey anguish and the will to survive. An important contribution to holocaust literature, this book is the source for a PBS documentary that Adelson produced and codirected. 25,000 first printing. (Nov.)