cover image Warsaw Ghetto CL Txt

Warsaw Ghetto CL Txt

Wadysaw Bartoszewski, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. Beacon Press (MA), $16.5 (117pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-5602-8

This memoir, the first U.S. publication by Bartoszewski, a Polish historian of the Holocaust, recalls the author's experiences in WW II Warsaw with the Council for Aid to Jews, which he helped found as a 19-year-old upon his release from Auschwitz. Understating his own courageous participation and quoting liberally from the published record, he describes the heroism of the council in providing what little help was possible to Polish Jews. The organization, working with Jewish and Christian underground groups and with financing from the Polish government in exile in London, aided some 4000 Jews during its first year alone, according to Bartoszewski, who, unfortunately, provides no further statistics. The council forged papers for Jews, found them hideouts, fed them. The group also distributed underground newspapers and other propaganda and, as vigilantes, tried and executed collaborators. With his firsthand testimony, Bartoszewski adds another chapter to the dossier documenting the fact that maligned WW II Poland was not indifferent to the fate of its Jews. (March)