Michelangelo in Ravensbrck: One Woman's War Against the Nazis

A Polish aristocrat born in Austria, Countess Lanckoronska (1898– 2002) became an art history professor at the University of Lvov, Poland. When the Soviets invaded in September 1939, the countess joined the resistance and eventually evaded arrest by fleeing to German-occupied Kraków, where she worked with the Polish Red Cross and continued her resistance activities. At Stanislawow, where she had been delivering care packages to prisoners, Lanckoronska was briefly imprisoned and local Gestapo chief Hans Krüger confessed to her that he had murdered 23 University of Lvov professors, a war crime she made it her mission to publicize. Imprisoned at Ravensbrück because of her political activities, the ever-resilient Lanckoronska cared for victims of medical experiments and taught art and European history. She eschewed her privileged status to join the ranks of prisoners, but as a Christian Lanckoronska never shared the ordeal of Jewish concentration camp prisoners, and her memoir says little about atrocities committed against European Jewry. Although the style is stilted and restrained, this is still a worthy, unsentimental eyewitness account that sheds welcome light on a tumultuous era of modern Polish history. 8 pages of b&w photos; map. (Apr. 5)