Konin: A Quest

Through the oral testimonies of survivors and archival research, English documentary filmmaker Richmond evokes the history, daily life and final ordeal of the Polish town of Konin's 3000-member Jewish community, liquidated by the Germans between 1939 and 1941 through massacres and deportations to death camps. The author, whose parents grew up in Konin and emigrated to England before World War I, spent eight years tracking down Konin's Jewish survivors in America, Canada, Britain and Israel. In Manhattan he meets tailor Louis Lefkowitz, chairman of a Konin society, a survivor of 21 Nazi camps. In Florida he interviews Sarah Trybuch, who, carrying her baby daughter, fled into a forest and joined a Jewish partisan group fighting the Germans. Other survivors tell of Jewish prisoners' doomed, courageous revolt in a Gestapo-run Konin slave labor camp. The testimonies combine the moral force of Primo Levi with the searing intensity of Jerzy Kosinski. Richmond also records his 1989 visit to Communist-ruled Konin accompanied by Holocaust survivor Izzy Hahn. This deeply moving book will achieve a permanent place in the literature. Photos. (Aug.)