Offering a rare glimpse into the lives of those who lived through the German occupation of Poland's capital, this important ethnography explores how elderly residents of Warsaw recollect, narrate, and commemorate their experiences, thus showing how the cultural legacies of the occupation reveal themselves in contemporary Polish society. The individuals who are the focus of this study, all long-time residents of the Warsaw neighborhood Zoliborz, responded to the daily deprivations and brutality of the German occupation by joining branches of the Polish underground, ultimately participating in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944—during which their neighborhood was burned, but not destroyed—as soldiers, couriers, and medics. Using life histories and ethnographic fieldwork, Tucker examines the ways that her informants recovered from the rupture of war, arguing that this process was connected to efforts to rebuild the city itself. Remembering Occupied Warsaw makes an important contribution to studies of collective memory. A moving work of oral history, this book will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and East European studies, as well as general readers interested in Polish history.

A "chilling" and "expertly" written history of the 1939 September Campaign and the onset of World War II (Times of London). For Americans, World War II began in December of 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; but for Poland, the war began on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's soldiers invaded, followed later that month by Stalin's Red Army. The conflict that followed saw the debut of many of the features that would come to define the later war-blitzkrieg, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing, and indiscriminate aerial bombing-yet it is routinely overlooked by historians. In Poland 1939, Roger Moorhouse reexamines the least understood campaign of World War II, using original archival sources to provide a harrowing and very human account of the events that set the bloody tone for the conflict to come.

"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--

"I want everyone I know to read this book." --Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say For fans of The Warsaw Orphan and The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The start of WWII changed everything in Poland irrevocably--except for one man's capacity to love. September 1, 1939: Sixty-year-old Janusz Korczak and the students and teachers at his Dom Sierot Jewish orphanage are outside enjoying a beautiful day in Warsaw. Hours later, their lives are altered forever when the Nazis invade. Suddenly treated as an outcast in his own city, Janusz--a respected leader known for his heroism and teaching--is determined to do whatever it takes to protect the children from the horrors to come. When over four hundred thousand Jewish people are rounded up and forced to live in the 1.3-square-mile walled compound of the Warsaw ghetto, Janusz and his friends take drastic measures to shield the children from disease and starvation. With dignity and courage, the teachers and students of Dom Sierot create their own tiny army of love and bravely prepare to march toward the future--whatever it may hold. Unforgettable, devastating, and inspired by a real-life hero of the Holocaust, The Teacher of Warsaw reminds the world that one single person can incite meaning, hope, and love. For fans of The Goddess of Warsaw, this gripping WWII novel offers a unique perspective on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity. With its powerful storytelling and poignant characters, The Teacher of Warsaw is a perfect book club pick. Delve deeper into the history and themes of the novel with the included timeline, author notes, and discussion questions. And don't miss Mario's other books: Auschwitz Lullaby, Children of the Stars, Remember Me, The Librarian of Saint-Malo, and The Forgotten Names "A beautifully written, deeply emotional story of hope, love, and courage in the face of unspeakable horrors. That such self-sacrifice, dedication and goodness existed restores faith in humankind. Escobar's heart-rending yet uplifting tale is made all the more poignant by its authenticity. Bravo!" --Tea Cooper, award-winning and bestselling author of The Cartographer's Secret

Offering a rare glimpse into the lives of those who lived through the German occupation of Poland's capital, this important ethnography explores how elderly residents of Warsaw recollect, narrate, and commemorate their experiences, thus showing how the cultural legacies of the occupation reveal themselves in contemporary Polish society. The individuals who are the focus of this study, all long-time residents of the Warsaw neighborhood Zoliborz, responded to the daily deprivations and brutality of the German occupation by joining branches of the Polish underground, ultimately participating in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944—during which their neighborhood was burned, but not destroyed—as soldiers, couriers, and medics. Using life histories and ethnographic fieldwork, Tucker examines the ways that her informants recovered from the rupture of war, arguing that this process was connected to efforts to rebuild the city itself. Remembering Occupied Warsaw makes an important contribution to studies of collective memory. A moving work of oral history, this book will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and East European studies, as well as general readers interested in Polish history.

In 1940, in the Jewish ghetto of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, the Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum established a clandestine scholarly organization called the Oyneg Shabes to record the experiences of the ghetto's inhabitants. For three years, members of the Oyneb Shabes worked in secret to chronicle the lives of hundereds of thousands as they suffered starvation, disease, and deportation by the Nazis. Shortly before the Warsaw ghetto was emptied and razed in 1943, the Oyneg Shabes buried thousands of documents from this massive archive in milk cans and tin boxes, ensuring that the voice and culture of a doomed people would outlast the efforts of their enemies to silence them. Impeccably researched and thoroughly compelling, Samuel D. Kassow's Who Will Write Our History? tells the tragic story of Ringelblum and his heroic determination to use historical scholarship to preserve the memory of a threatened people.

In Warsaw Ghetto Police, Katarzyna Person shines a spotlight on the lawyers, engineers, young yeshiva graduates, and sons of connected businessmen who, in the autumn of 1940, joined the newly formed Jewish Order Service. Person tracks the everyday life of policemen as their involvement with the horrors of ghetto life gradually increased. Facing and engaging with brutality, corruption, and the degradation and humiliation of their own people, these policemen found it virtually impossible to exercise individual agency. While some saw the Jewish police as fellow victims, others viewed them as a more dangerous threat than the German occupation authorities; both were held responsible for the destruction of a historically important and thriving community. Person emphasizes the complexity of the situation, the policemen's place in the network of social life in the ghetto, and the difficulty behind the choices that they made. By placing the actions of the Jewish Order Service in historical context, she explores both the decisions that its members were forced to make and the consequences of those actions. Featuring testimonies of members of the Jewish Order Service, and of others who could see them as they themselves could not, Warsaw Ghetto Police brings these impossible situations to life. It also demonstrates how a community chooses to remember those whose allegiances did not seem clear. Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.