Poland Books

I have read the two other novels in this trilogy by another translator. They were superior and more exciting I could not put them down. This book translated by Jeremiah Curtin is absolutely terrible, I can't force myself to read it. I can not recommend this translation of a terrific trilogy.

I own a ninety year old translation of With Fire and Sword. The translation is a bit stilted (as was our English back then),but the cover is falling off from my avid reading. When I found the Kuniczak translation of The Deluge, I couldn't wait to read more, and this does not disappoint. The fresh idiomatic English is mostly smooth, (although a few expressions stand out as more modern slang). Once again, Pan Zagloba roars across the pages and the "little colonel" Wolodyovski does his best defending the Motherland, and at the same time, to catch the eye of pretty girls. The drama and characters of 17th century Poland and Lithuania cannot help to inspire an interest in this area. I was amazed when I read the true story of the politics and shifting alliances of the region, and to imagine a powerful SWEDISH army (oxymoron these days). A true classic that never gets old.

By all means, buy this edition if it is your only way to enter the marvelous world that Sienkiewicz has given to Poland and to posterity. Discover why the Trilogy has been a best-seller in its native land for more than a century. Epic adventure, star-crossed love, villains, heroes, treachery, heartbreak and humor. Sienkiewicz wrote to lift up the hearts of his people, and if he doesn't lift yours, see a cardiologist immediately.

But beg or borrow if you can, and steal if you must, the translation by W.S. Kuniczak that was published in the early 1990s. Discover what happens when a novelist translates. Kuniczak is true not just to the sentences, but to the spirit of the work. He blows the dust out of the century-old writing and lets it shine. And for readers not on intimate terms with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th Century (admit it), he effortlessly drops in helpful hints.

Here's how Curtin starts:

There was in Jmud a powerful family, the Billeviches, descended from Mendog, connected with many, and respected, beyond all, in the district of Rossyeni. ... Their native nest, existing to this day, was called Billeviche; ... In later times they branched out into a number of houses, the members of which lost sight of one another. They all assembled only when there was a census at Rossyeni of the general militia of Jmud on the plain of the invited Estates.

And Kuniczak:

In the part of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania that was known as Zmudya, and which antedated the times of recorded history, there lived an ancient family named Billevitch, widely connected with many other houses of Lithuanian gentry, and respected more than any other in the Rosyen region. ... Their family seat, known as Billevitche ... so that in time they split into several branches that seldom saw each other. Some of them got together now and then when the Zmudyan gentry gathered for the annual military census near Rosyen on a plain called Stany...

Honestly, which version would you rather spend 1700 pages with? The native nest or the family seat?

(And just by the by, when will a smart publisher sell the Sienkiewicz Trilogy alongside Tolkien? Why do they squirrel it away with the Serious Literature in Translation that mostly gathers dust? There's millions and millions of dollars in these books, lying around, waiting for someone to market them properly.)

and that never happened before. I will confess I picked up this book because of the cover. I was waiting for a study group at the main library at Boston College. It was a new release and had on the cover a beatiful painting of charging polish hussars. I said to myself this looks real cool. I read the first chapter standing at the lobby because my stupid study group was late. I was instantly addicted. I borrowed and finished it in less than a week and then borrowed that second volume.

It was such a moving experience. Pan Andy, Fat Zagloba, and Mikey just leapt from the pages and off I went on a high adventure with these guys. This is better than Tolkien or any fantasy adventure ever written. I really felt like I was with these guys trying to free their country from oblivion.

The stormy romance between Andei Kmicic and Olenka Billevich seems like an allegory of the relationship between the Polish szlachta and Poland itself. The petty squabbling, quarreling, and self-serving behavior of the szlachta alienates them from their country as Kmicic's headstrong and reckless behavior alienates him from the woman he loves. "It seemed to Kmita then that Poland and Olenka were one and the same, and that he had doomed them both and handed them voluntarily to the Swedes" (Kuniczak translation, p. 753). Sienkiewicz obviously wishes to leave a clear lesson here for the free people of any nation.

The story foreshadows two issues that emerged during the Second World War: the Germans who were "only following orders" and the Vichy French who collaborated with the Germans. What is one supposed to do when his superior orders him to do something that is obviously wrong? At what point does acquiescence to a victorious invader for the purpose of avoiding further harm to one's country become collaboration with an enemy? Can someone collaborate with the enemy for the purpose, as Janusz Radziwill claimed, of turning on him and overthrowing him at a more opportune moment? (The few colonels who went along with Radziwill were in a semi-feudal system in which a retainer obeyed his lord and the lord was supposed to obey the King. Radziwill's foreign mercenaries had no such dilemma because they owed their loyalty only to their paymaster.)

During the 1970s, the United States began to lose the manufacturing capability that led to victory in the Second World War. Our Congress has its own Opalinskis and Radziwills, people whose first priority is their own political success as opposed to service to the country. They are unwilling or unable to understand that wealth must be created through agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, and that it cannot be legislated into existence. The Senatorial filibuster is now used to block judicial appointments, as the Liberum Veto was once used to break up the Sejm. The jester Ostrozka showed how the handwriting was on the wall for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's ideological successor and heir, the United States, needs to take the same warning very seriously lest it suffer the same fate.

Gen. Kuklinski's efforts against a communist system controlled by an outside power seems commendable on the outside, but what everyone here seems to forget is that the same CIA that worked with Kuklinski, supposedly to 'fight communist tyrrany' was the same one involved in overthrowing legitimate governments, repressing independence movements, funding terrorism, assasinating foreign leaders who did not see eye to eye with US government policies and interests as well as many other unpleasant acts that sadly too many people either do not know about or do not care to remember.

What Gen. Kuklinski did or did not do is known only to him and his CIA handlers. But things in this book must be taken with a grain of salt. In the cold war, the CIA was notorious for anti-Soviet false flag operations and disinformation propaganda. I only read half of the book and did not bother finishing it. Some of the events might have been outright fabrications.
As far as whether Gen. Kuklinski was a traitor or patriot in the end really depends on which side one is on. To Gen. Jaruzelski, Kuklinski is a traitor while to some CIA official Kuklinski is a hero. But let's take it from another angle: Suppose Gen. Kuklinski's espionage efforts resulted in a covert CIA Op which ended up killing a bunch of Polish civilians? How would that be seen?
What is Gen. Kuklinski's legacy? It is one of selling out one miserable SOB to another miserable SOB, for a price.

Move over, James Bond! Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's focus mostly on the intelligence-gathering aspects of this thriller.

Imagine that you're Ryszard Kuklinski. The best way to avoid excessive surveillance by Communist counterintelligence is to make your daily routine as predictable as possible. You get a dog so that you can stroll around the neighborhood naturally. You give and receive signals to and from your contacts with chalk marks on the pavement. (These sometimes get washed away). You use your wife's iron to reveal messages in invisible ink, and take up hobby photography as a cover for photography of another kind.

You dislike dead-drops because, for one thing, someone else might stumble upon them. You use the brush pass. As you walk per your usual routines, you turn into one of those impossible-to-predict labyrinthic streets so that you are out of prying eyes for a few precious seconds. During this time, you exchange packages with another agent.

The brush passes go uneventfully--until one night. No sooner is it completed than you are hit by the headlights of a car. You try to duck into a side street but your move is anticipated. Finally, you shake off the pursuer. Were you seen well enough by the driver to be positively identified? You think/hope not. But just in case, you get a haircut. Luckily this time, you are safe.

Even little slip-ups can be killers. At one point, your son finds a secret note that you had carelessly taped too lightly on the underside of a piece of furniture. You cannot account for a roll of film, and your colleagues speak of the discovery of a "spy film". (It later turns up in the pocket of your seldom-used shirt). At another time, you are in another world, and you crash face-first into a pillar while carrying sensitive information. Nice way to be unobtrusive!

Picture yourself (pardon the pun) getting caught red-handed, by an officer entering the room, taking surreptitious photos of classified documents. You act normal, but cannot get over the fear that the officer has seen exactly what you were doing and will report you. Then, when nothing seems to happen, you still fear that you are being carefully monitored so that the Communist counterintelligence can trace your contacts and then trap everyone.

You had better not carry a gun because, if you use it and then seek refuge in the US Embassy, the Communist authorities may have legal grounds to have you turned over to them. You fully realize that, if caught, you will be tortured into divulging information, and then be executed. Besides, the Communists will make a spectacle of you for propaganda purposes. For this reason, you request a suicide pill from the CIA. They at first refuse, fearing that an agent may take it in a moment of panic, or that the discovery of the poison could itself be used for propaganda purposes. But in the end the CIA provides the pill--inside a pen.

In any Soviet-NATO war, Poland would be the route for 95% of the Soviet military advance. Poland would then get hit with 400-600 nuclear bombs in an attempt to stop the Soviet advance without escalating the conflict into a full-blown Soviet-US nuclear holocaust (p. 16). No wonder Kuklinski realized that Poland was doomed! (Some conspiracy-minded Poles suggested that the Polack joke syndrome had been a concerted effort to demean Poland so that the American public wouldn't protest too much the future destruction of Poland).

Kuklinski's achievements were staggering: Tens of thousands of highly-classified Soviet documents passed on to the US (p. 300). And that was just the beginning. After his flight to the US, Kuklinski provided much information during his debriefing. May he be forever honored, and rest in peace!

"A Secret Life" is a gripping read for two key reasons. First and foremost, it is a suspenseful espionage tale with unpredictable twists and turns. To me, it even stands among the best fictional works of that genre by Le Carre and Ludlum.

The second reason is more holistic. The author, New York Times journalist Benjamin Weiser, has gotten at Kuklinski's heart and managed to successfully explore his motives and ethical dilemma for providing intelligence to the CIA. Kuklinski did not make this decision lightly. He felt morally obligated to do so, and his reasons for doing so are clearly spelled out in the book. When you read about these reasons, it's very difficult to disagree with him. (I do not understand the reviewers who call him a traitor.)

I would recommend this book regardless of whether you are pro- or anti-CIA. Some reviewers here claim that Weiser's purpose was to naively lavish the agency with biased praise. In his introduction, however, Weiser references the "justified criticism" that the organization has endured due to its activities over the years, and goes on to say that Kuklinski's story demonstrates that human intelligence operations can succeed brilliantly, and should serve as an example for such future operations.

Weiser's detailed and measured tale of Kuklinski's historical contribution to Cold War espionage is to be read and enjoyed. His story is taut and thrilling and reminds one of a good John Le Carre novel. Beyond the issue of whether Kuklinski is a hero or traitor to the Polish nation [which is fairly raised and detailed by the author], Weiser never loses control of the subject matter, and, of the abundant documentation he uncovered in his unique access to CIA records. He instills Kuklinski with humanity and sense of Polish nationalism. A fine work to be read and enjoyed.

"Sometimes it's not enough to do what is right, sometimes one must do what is necessary." Ryszard Kuklinski knew what was right, did what was necessary...and paid a terrible price.

Benjamin Weiser's riveting work A SECRET LIFE, on Polish hero Ryszard Kuklinski, is an enlightening look back into the dark intrigue, personal danger, and moral dilemmas surrounding one military officer's private battles to liberate his country from totalitarianism. Most importantly, this work shatters the left-wing's liberal illusion of "peaceful coexistence" with a communist system whose very raison d' etre is the destruction of freedom, democracy and enslavement of the West.

Kuklinski saw internal conflict to evict the alien system imposed upon his country by the USSR--as opposed to connivance or the wishful thinking of ideological transformation through "gradualism," favored by some of his Polish General Staff contemporaries, who, for lack of courage or personal gain, fully cooperated with their harsh Soviet task masters--as the only realistic option for peace in the face of Poland's likely nuclear annihilation, had war ensued with the United States. He dared to act accordingly, becoming an agent of change feeding top-secret Warsaw Pact military information to the CIA; thereby, tipping the balance of power in favor of liberty, while loosening the demoralizing death-grip of communist rule over Eastern Europe, as a de facto one-man Polish Underground.

When considering the totality of personal sacrifice and enormity of danger faced by Kuklinski, in his nearly solitary and single-handed struggle against radical, state-sponsored evil--who carried a suicide pill to end his life if caught and was sentenced to death, in absentia, by the Polish Military Court--moral giants like Kurt Gerstein and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn come to mind. It saddens me that former communist collaborators or sympathizers, like Aleksander Kwasniewski, were celebrated or elevated to significant post-Soviet leadership positions and societal prominence, while the country remains bitterly divided over Kuklinski, who has yet to be nationally vindicated, though history has already done so.

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzesinski said it best when he honored him with the words traditionally reserved for decorating Polish soldiers: "Pan sie dobrze Polsce zasluzyl: You have served Poland well." Rest in peace Colonel Kuklinski.

The great Jeff Cooper said it best: "Pick up a rifle and you change instantly from a subject to a citizen."
Too many Americans need to read this book and start realizing why we "gun nuts" will not move an inch off of our Second Amendment...wall.

If you read this book, you will enter the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1940's, and live there along side the Jews, Poles, etc. You will experience their joys, humor, cleverness, sadness, depression, anxiety, and terror. The characters are fictional; the history is factual; and the heartbreak too real! If you want a history lesson on Nazi persecution, on the sense of family under horrendous pressures, on the claustrophobia of living underground, and the exhilarations of courage and weapons acquisition--and a cold, hard look at the Final Solution in action--this is the book for you!

This is John Hersey's stunning novel about the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WW II. It's a huge, sprawling book, and revolves around upwards of fifty different characters in their struggle to survive Nazi atrocities within the ghetto. Hersey based much of the novel on thousands of pages of original source material written in Polish and Yiddish by Jews in Warsaw. A handful of the characters begin to take center stage and relate what's going on and their feelings and impressions through first-person narratives: Dolek Berson, Pavel Menkes, Henryck Rapaport, Rachel Apt, and especially Noach Levinson become leaders of the "Jewish family" that first confront the Germans and then finally escape as the last buildings are being razed. With so many characters we witness the vast array of human qualities, from the strong to the weak, the resourceful and resilient to the helpless and feeble. Not only is the book an indictment of the horrors that people are able and willing to inflict on others, it's a rousing hurrah for those who fight against and somehow survive the torture and humiliation. The book is an amazing achievement, certainly Hersey's greatest novel.

You can read the other reviews to get an idea as to what the story covers, but I want to share with you my experience as to the impact of its delivery and tale. I read a lot. And it's rare for a book to make me laugh out loud or cry tears. At first, I neither liked nor cared for any of the characters. At the end, I cried; hard. I've never had a story affect me this way.

This book seems to be based on the real-life diaries of Emanuel Ringelblum, whose copious writings were unearthed after WWII, and also takes a similar form to the novel 'Mila 18,' which is also based around journal entries taking place in Warsaw during WWII. This particular journal was kept by Noach Levinson, whom we find out in the foreword died in March of 1944 of TB, and was unearthed by several of the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, it isn't the normal book told in journal form, since Noach mostly describes what happens around him and to other people instead of just focusing on himself and his own feelings. Many of the entries are told from the point of view of other characters, who later related their stories and feelings to Noach, even opening up to him about very personal private matters. I would strongly recommend it to people looking to read more in this sub-genre of Shoah literature, right up there with 'Mila 18' and Ringelblum's actual journals.

However, this book was a little slow at first for me, but it quickly became more interesting and faster-paced. And I'm hardly one to talk since my own writing features a lot of characters as well, but sometimes it was hard to remember who was whom because there were so many characters, even minor secondary characters, and sometimes these characters would go unmentioned for pages at a time, making it a bit difficult to get a picture of just what this person's significance was or even what this person was like. In a book with a lot of characters, it's easier to keep track of everyone if characters are introduced and developed at around the same time instead of just popping up sporadically. As a result, I didn't feel attached to all of these characters in the same way. Still, that's a relatively minor criticism given that the subject matter itself is so engrossing and detailed.

My other relatively minor issue with the book is the writing style itself. Sometimes it does seem a little pretentious or confusing how an entry will be broken up midway through with an insert in brackets, an insert containing an older entry or an entry that would be written at a future date, or notes from conversations that took place while the survivors were hiding in a sewer after the revolt, on a subject related to the main entry. This occasional nonlinear structure didn't really seem that effective or natural to me. There were also a number of inserts in brackets referencing older entries; even if this was meant to be told in a journalistic matter, that still seems a bit pretentious in a work of fiction, kind of interrupting the natural flow of the story. I also wished there had been some sort of afterword, providing more of a sense of closure on what happened to the survivors after they were taken from the sewer to the partisans in the woods. I was left wondering what had happened to some of the characters who had escaped the Ghetto and were now living on the Aryan side, like Rachel's father and sister, or Rachel's little brother David, who was in a secret convoy going to Palestine. Still, all in all, in spite of a few comparatively minor shortcomings, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in this particular sub-genre of Shoah literature.

Without a doubt this book is one of historical perspective. The reason it is important, is that it was written in 1953, by a man who had seen how fascism, dictatorship, genocide, communism and stalinism does not just to people but to a society as a whole.

Milosz lived in Poland between the two world wars, and watched how a nation that had been eliminated by three countries, one hundred and thirty years ago; can itself, become a war monger and a destroyer of 'other' cultures in the name of rebirth. He then saw another nation (Hitler's Germany) waste it's people and soul trying to prove that they were superior to everyone else. Lastly, he watched a nation, supposedly in the name of the 'people' destroy other nations and cultures in the name of those same people.

Stalin said that the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions are just statistics. Stalin of course was a great maker of statistics. When the 'People's Democracies' were created in Eastern Europe after WWII, their stated objective was to create a classless society, for the enhancement of the proletariat. Unfortunely, not everyone wanted to be enhanced. But, under the theory that, it is better to imprison twenty innocent people than to miss one criminal, millions were killed, tortured, and dispossessed; in order to create a 'worker's paradise'.

Milosz's stories are a warning to those that would collaborate in their own destruction.

I often wonder as I read about the horrors committed by the worst regimes in history, how the people that perpetrate crimes against humanity can live with themselves. What is the motive and reasoning of those who praise the slaughter of innocents?

The Captive Mind sheds a little bit of light into these darkest corners of the human psyche. It describes the path that leads righeous people on the road to immorality, written by a man who, along with his friends and comerads, traveled that road but took another path before he came to his final destination.

This book is outstanding. It's one of the few books I really wish everyone was familiar with. I mean that. A lot of times if a book is really good, I sort of like that I've read it and other people haven't. It gives me sort of a shallow, self absorbed kick. This one is too good for that though.

One word to the wise, this book is not simply about how bad communism is/was, though it adresses that in detail. It's also about how any form of totalitarianism, which squelches thre freedom of the human mind is totally awful. So the way to read this is not really to say, "hey look this proves that those leftists/rightists I've always hated are totally evil and screwed up." No, it's more to look at any absolutist ideology being peddled a little bit askance. Whether it's right wing radio, or left wing marches led by A.N.S.W.E.R. anyone who thinks they are right %100 of the time is probably a shady character. I didn't make that up, I got it from the quote he used in the front of the book. But I was too lazy to go downstairs and grab the book to get the exact quote. So there you have it. This book is incredible. I'm pretty confident you'll like it. Unless you're some kind of psycho (sorry If I'm hurting your feelings).

Looking at modern day people of the left, I often notice that they have a vision of their ideologies, whether socialist, feminist, multiculturalist, etc. etc. etc., that is utopian in nature and almost impenetrable to negative feedback about the actual consequences of their policies. Exactly what is it in the human psyche that allows some ideologies to hook into someone's consciousness with such tenacity?

Czeslaw Milosz had the same questions in his day when communism was in the ascendancy on the world stage and appeared to have the winds of history at its back. He wrote THE CAPTIVE MIND in an attempt to address such issues by telling us the stories of several authors captured by the communist ideal. The result is a classic book still timely to the same issues today as we read of talented individuals willing to sell their talents, and alas their souls, over to an ideal of human perfection while justifying the trail of mass destruction and slaughter that came about instead.

In one major way, I am disappointed with the book. One of the more powerful statements that I read about totalitarian ideologies of the past was that there were numerous people outside of the ideological circle screaming their heads off about what was going on. Yet there was some mechanism or mechanisms within the ideology itself which prevented such negative feedback from entering the loop. My own experience with ideologues has demonstrated this time and again. It is just breathtaking to hear the unbelievable verbal gymnastics and mental contortions used to maintain a belief in one's sytem. I was hoping that THE CAPTIVE MIND would explore the pschological infrastructure of the totalitarian mentality far more than it does. Well, I cannot have everything, I suppose.

A reader should be aware that THE CAPTIVE MIND can be a tad difficult. Milosz often switches perspectives from his voice to others to hypotheticals and back again without clearly delineating the shifts. This can make a cursory reading ineffective and possibly even misleading. The book is not that hardgoing, so taking one's time is recommended.

"... This book speaks of the horrors of communism, a crime against humanity that killed tens of millions and a crime that many of the perpetrators still haven't been called to account for. Instead, we get "anti-war" rallies sponsored by these same butchers...."

Woah. Obviously this reviewer cheers for libertarian ideology, but these lines really show the way the modern conservative movement has in effect mutated and desecrated the great ideas of classical liberals and libertarians.

You must think that the current US foreign policy, militarism, and a national defense centralized in the pentagon protects Christian liberty from totalitarianism, right? And that common private individuals excercising their constitutional rights are unpatriotic stalinist terrorist liberty-haters? Right?

In Bourne's words, "War is the HEALTH OF THE STATE (emphasis added)". The wars governments have waged are the very main inoculator for the expansion of centralized States. Especially in regards to the US, where anti-communism transformed the conservative movement into chickenhawk clones squawking for big government and BIG morality administered by Washington DC.

It is the state which must draft civilians, or take their lives to fight for government in a war. Any enemy is suspect by the state, and always enough the very civilians in that government who dissent are some of the biggest "enemies" of the government in wartime, the "butcher" war veterans (who have actually seen service), little old ladies and average Americans.

War engorges the government to naturally take away the rights of the citizenry. National defense brings with it suppresion of liberty. The above reviewer is with his neoconservative sympathizers apologizing for all totalitarians who wage violence against innocents by that very arrogant, paternalistic badgering against the hated anti-war protestors, some of which are the true conservatives and know what a society of liberty needs: peace (maybe some actual defense too, how about it, Dubya?)


Now, to the actual book. A brilliant defense of liberal values from a nation of liberal thinkers, bravely through its history defending the best of the West for the East. Milosz and his dreamlike style should be best read in the original slavic for the full effect (like most foreign books), but its another anti-statist classic if its read in english anyway.

I love the content of this book.

However, I agree with Don--another reviewer: the print in this book is VERY SMALL. I find it difficult to read such SMALL PRINT.
Unfortunately, I didn't take Don's warning into account when I bought this edition. Avoid making the same mistake.

By the way, the only glasses I use are safety glasses, at work. And my vision is excellent.

It's just a matter of comfort. I dislike struggling reading such small print and feel the need to buy a different edition with larger print (I probably will.)

Other than that, its content is a joy. Plus, due to its smaller print, the size of the book is smaller as well. That is good if you are traveling with it or if you take it with you to read throughout the day, outside your home.

Remember: if you're are going to read it at home solely, you'd be better off buying an edition with larger print.

This is a beautiful & eye-opening book! It changes your way of thinking and your life!! I absolutely love it and can read it over and over. It helps understand God.

The print in this book is quite small making reading difficult. I would recommend searching for a copy with normal size print.

This is my all-time favorite spiritual book. By reading about St. Faustina's growth in holiness, I learn about growing in holiness and above all, God's endless mercy. I've read this book probably a dozen times and I everytime I hear something new and grow more deeply in my relationship with Christ. By this book for yourself and everyone you know! Spread the hope of God's awesome mercy!

This book has helped me to grow so much in my spirituality. I highly recommend it!

Escape from Sobibor, by Richard Rashke, is a profound work. It was even more disturbing and thought-provoking than my visit to the Jewish Concentration Camp in Dachau, Germany.

The book reveals a startling and detailed picture of the atrocities committed at the super-secret Sobibor Jewish Extermination Camp in Poland, where more than 250,000 Jews were tortured and murdered during World War II. Approximately 600 "fortunate" Jews were spared to maintain the camp, assist with "processing" prisoners, and perform other duties for the Nazis. Of this group, some 300 escaped one well-planned afternoon - the only successful Jewish breakout from a Nazi prisoner camp. All but about 30 were recaptured and executed.

Through intimate, sensitive interviews with survivors and meticulous research, Rashke fills the empty boots of Holocaust victims with bodies, faces, hearts, and souls. He demonstrates how spirit, strength, cooperation, and luck drove the escapees to fulfill their mission - to let the world know what was really going on behind the pristine facade so carefully cultivated by the SS at Sobibor.

Escape from Sobibor answers one question the uninformed always ask, "Why didn't the Jews resist?" Many tried, as Rashke describes so well. Inside the camp, the Jews faced overwhelming odds. They were unarmed, denied the right to assemble, and often betrayed by staff and fellow prisoners. Outside the camp, they were surrounded by mostly hostile and frightened neighbors who would not provide food, shelter, or weapons and who also frequently betrayed them.

Escape from Sobibor also compels the reader to consider other important issues about the Holocaust, including why the rest of the world chose to ignore the Jewish plight for so long and how humans can be so cruel to each other. Exploration of these topics is still significant since racial and ethnic discrimination and abuse persists around the world.

It is clear from the haunting accounts chronicled by Rashke that no one really "escaped" from Sobibor, even if they are still alive today. Now I will never really "escape" Sobibor either.

The writer captures the horror behind the horror! By placing background interviews of survivors both before and after he covers the escape itself, Mr. Rashke adds a personal touch to the horrors that the Jewish people of Europe went through, especially those from Poland. He truthfully depicts the Anti-Semitism of the Poles then and, unfortunatly NOW! If you buy the DVD, I highly reccomend you bu this book, also. The only negative, and it's a minor one, is that the maps and drawings could be clearer.

This book is one of the best books depicting the horror and determination of the Jewish people and supporters. It incites hatred and disgust on a whole new levels for the Nazi's and their followers, and also brings a real like look at the Jews in the camp; playing chess, falling in love and escaping with extreme courage.

The book, however, is at times a little confusing with time periods and events, rather than staying in chronological order I wish the auther would have stuck with characters instead. I would read about someone in Chapter 1, then in Chapter 10 and have to go back and reread saying "Oh ok him." I would also have to reread certain sections because it was with history, personal, political agendas mixed in. I understand the author's wish for extreme detail and the many characters necessity but the flow of the book would throw me off time to time.

Over all a good read and an even greater story of heroism.

I am so glad the people whose lives are told about in this book were willing to share there personal histories with us the reader. I am also greatful for Richard Rashke for the time and energy spent researching this book to bring it to life. The people in this book will touch your heart and you will find yourself thinking of them as people you know and care for and cry for and pray for even still. Even though many books have been written of holocaust survivors,every one deserves to be read,no matter. They speak out for the living as well as the dead. We must never forget,and we must read books such as this one to keep them alive in our memories.

This book represents a painful retelling of life and death in a World War II Nazi death camp where some 250,000 Jews were taken. Nearly all of them were quickly exterminated, but a sliver of a percent escaped, and from them we learn about Sobibor. We learn how thousands of lives were snuffed out daily and how thousands of bodies were disposed of daily. We learn how the "lucky" ones, chosen to work at the camp, dealt with gruesome events associated with the daily march toward annihilation of their race.

After reading this book, I have a much deeper understanding not only of what Jews have been through, but how this leads many of them to think. I noticed that Rashke helped me understand the Jewish mindset, but not the Nazi mindset. I suppose Rashke didn't take this one on because there really is no defensible logic for Nazi behavior. What in the world led so many Nazis to conclude that Jews deserved no dignity or treatment as humans? What could I possibly learn from someone who could "pick up a baby by the feet, smash its head against a boxcar, and then toss it into the miners' train like a dead rat" (p. 92 in the paperback).

The book ends with about 75 pages that explain how Rashke found and interviewed the people whose stories are told in "Escape from Sobibor." It's a useful format to place this at the end of the book, since by now I'm involved in their lives and want to know what happened after the war ended. This section reveals that the survivors are never really free of Sobibor. There are daily reminders and frequent nightmares. But I'm thankful that they were willing to open the wounds and bleed again. Stories like this, despite the injustice and atrocity and inhumanity they expose, should never be buried.

Having just finished this final book of the Trilogy, I feel like I'm saying goodbye to close friends I have lived with, fought alongside, and laughed with for years. I suppose that statement, all by itself, is testament enough to Sienkiewicz's skill as a writer.

Although I loved this book very much, I must be objective in reviewing it. Truth is, Sienkiewicz's plot deployment was a little scattered this time out. The first part of the book is political, then there's a romance, then a short section depicting life at a Polish outpost (which dragged a bit and at times almost descended to burlesque), then there's the adventure of Basia's flight, and finally a battle against the Turks. Each section is very well done, of course, but there's no character, tone, or narrative thread tying it all together. It ends up being rather disjointed, so I have to give it 4 stars rather than the 5 stars I want to.

All that aside, the writing here is unbelievably masterful. The battle against the Turks stands toe to toe with Homer's Iliad in it's grandeur and power. And the end of the book was a shattering surprise (no spoilers, don't worry), and I was deeply affected by it. The translator's afterword has a few sentences about Pan Zagloba that made me feel like I swallowed a rock. I'm a 38 year old man not given to sentimental outbursts, but I totally lost it at the end of this story.

I started reading "With Fire and Sword" for the first time almost ten years ago, and I would love to keep reading about these characters for another 3,000 pages. Luckily, I have all these books in hardcover so I can rejoin these wonderful characters whenever I like until I'm so old my eyes stop working. Well done, Henryk, and kudos to the translator for bringing this literary masterpiece into the English language.

I still get a feeling in my gut when I remember finishing this book. It is that good and that powerful. The characters are easy to get attached to -- and like many 19th century novels the author is not sparring in playing his reader's emotions. This is a worthy culmination to an amazing set of books (starting with "With Fire & Sword"). While no book is for everyone, I have recommended this series to a diverse group of friends and family members and always been thanked for doing so. There is romance, drama, and action all rolled up into a real page turner.
If you are reading this review, my guess is you have not read the first two parts of this series or else you would be hooked by now. If that is the case, track down a copy of With Fire & Sword and start there. You will not be disappointed.

If you like history and epic stories (Dumas, Walter Scott), then "The trilogy" (this being the third book after "Fire & Sword" and "Deluge") is definitely a must-read - great story, battles, romance are all there and even though the events that are covered in the trilogy are probably unfamiliar to most US readers, that should not detract from enjoyment.
As many other people said, this is an abashedly partisan view of history, from one side only and you should not try to use this book as your guide to Eastern European history. I don't see that being a problem for a fiction novel, though.

The translation, I thought, was decent but definitely less than perfect and the cutting out of epilogue is really just too bad

Like the other two books in the trilogy, this is a sweeping epic. The characters (many of them drawn from Polish legend) are extremely compelling and despite it's 1000 plus pages, the book reads like the wind. You are thrown from one adventure to the next. A must read for anyone who likes swashbuckling, war, history or lovestories. It's all in there. I definitely recommend reading the earlier books in the series. However, the book stands on its own.

I am not Polish or of Polish descent nor does one have to be to read and enjoy these masterpieces.

I could not put down any of the books in this series. The heroes, the villians and the women were enthralling. I particularly enjoyed the Catholic Christian aspect of the books and the importance of the spiritual to the soldiers involved. I would most highly recommend Sienkiewicz to any person who loves adventure, fidelity and God.

Reads like a novel but its true.I read both of Bryan Rigg's books. I was amazed that so much well researched history could be told so well. If my college history text books had been so well written I might have actually enjoyed history.

I think both Rigg's books are MUST reads for everyone who wonders how the Third Reich happened and want to understand the pschy of that time in history. Bryan's excellent work adds an other element of understanding to the era. If we don't know and remember we will repeat it, or something like it or something worse, somewhere, sometime in our and our childrens' lifetime. Never again!

While this book is exceptionally well researched it lacks the mystery and complexity that would make it more entertaining. That is not to say that it should have been or could have been more "exciting," only that it reads more like a history book than something you might pick up for a quick weekend read (which it was for me). Rigg provides excellent linearity and reviews the different individuals so the reader stays connected. The excellent historical account of Chabad and the Lubivitchers really stand out. In addition, Rigg devotes the longest chapter to the moral decisions of the Rebbe to "rescue" secular and non-orthodox Jews in the U.S. rather than those facing death in Europe. Though an important point, it was made in a few paragraphs and then became quite redundant over the next 30 pages or so. I got the feeling that the editors simply wanted more words to make a longer book, regardless of their substance. Though a remarkable account filled with amazing events, this is a book to check out of the library and read quickly.

this will hold your attention and is an unusual story of how both germans and jews conspired to save a holy man. it makes one realize that such rescues were possible if only people were willing to make the effort and take the risk. it also highlights how some individual high in the nazi regime were against the persecution and destruction of the jewish people.

I was quite excited to receive my copy of "Rescued from the Reich". From his first book, "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers..." I knew I could expect a well-researched and documented book on an obscure but important topic concerning the Third Reich, one of my own major interests.

Dr. Rigg has outdone himself. While his first book was occasionally slow-moving (growing out of a doctoral dissertation), "Rescued from the Reich" is both well-documented and shows evolution of Dr. Rigg's historical narrative style, making it more of a page-turner or page-burner, which adds a great deal to a book of this type. Also, now fully-fledged a professional historian, I think I see Dr. Rigg willing to make more speculations, which increase the readability of this work.

Who could believe it? An Abwehr officer, half-Jewish, sent to Warsaw in the middle of the bombing of Poland to rescue the Rebbe of the Lubavitch sect from the German advance and the eventual Final Solution? It is not only believeable, but of course true--and in that sense, a political thriller. In "Der Untergang", a film growing out of the novel of the same name, we see Heinrich Himmler encouraging his Fuehrer even in the last dark days of the Reich, while Berlin is being shelled, to consider "making politics" (Politik machen) with the Western Allies.

I think Admiral Canaris and Major Ernst Bloch, responding to a request from Washington, were doing the same--making politics, with an eye toward the disastrous future for Germany. Only in such a way could such a mission be justified by the Abwehr--the German CIA, which trumped even the Gestapo (inner Germany secret police, analagous to the FBI).

I cannot recommend this historial work more highly--to anyone interested in the evolution of the Third Reich, WW2, the Holocaust, and intelligence matters. Great effort, Dr. Rigg!

Dr. Rigg's first book, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers, gave a careful and balanced scholarly account of those 150,000 part-Jewish soliders in the Germany military of WWII. ONe of the most amazing things I have ever encountered. He outdid himself with this follow up. Who could believe that in 1939 the U.S. State Dept. could partner with a Nazi intellignece agency to secretly rescue the rebbe from occupied, war torn Poland? The complications were staggering -- if the Nazi intelligence agents were discovered by the other Nazi agencies they would have been executed. The rebbe was mystical and eccentric and was a VERY difficult man to hide and smuggle.

Riggs can be a little long-winded at times, but overall he relaly knows how to tell a story well. This really should be made into a film soon.

A very factual book about the Holocaust in Poland and the atrocities that both the Polish Jews and Gentiles suffered. This book is very well laid out and all comments are linked to sources of information.
This would be an ideal book for anyone studying the history of WW2 in Europe.
Some of the content is very distressing to read but in my opinion it's a topic that should never be forgotten.

Recent scholarship on Poland's suffering during the war has opened eyes on the Warsaw Uprising of 1944(not the earlier Ghetto uprising of 1943) and has illuminated the destruction of Poland brought on by the Nazis. The Nazi racial theory applied to Slavs led them to be used as slaves and treated as meat by the German conquerors. Poland was treated a cow for milking, as hundreds of thousands of Germans entered Poland to administer and colonize it, it being the first nation to be 'liberated' for German 'labenstraum'. Here we get a story of the 'holocaust' of the non-Jewish Poles and perhaps this is where the helpful aspect of this book collides with the its other bizarre appeal. Many Holocaust deniers cite this book in order to prove that The Holocaust is being used to only show Jewish suffering while the 'real' holocaust of other non-Jews is covered up in histiography. Hence the name 'Forgotten Holocaust". However logically if the suffering of the Poles needs to be brough out of the dustbin of history and brought out alongside the Holocaust then why compare it to the Holocaust. The suffering of the Poles is not a 'fogotten Holocaust' rather it is another massive war crime that should be addressed in history and presented alongside the holocaust to show that the Nazis target other groups for destruction, if not extermination.

The Polish experience was different then the Jewish one. Polich Jews were destroyed, Poles were slaughtered in large numbers. However we have in the case of Poland a double tragedy when one realizes that hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported by the Communist Soviets between 1939 and 1941. In the end POlish borders were moved westward while Soviet Ukraine and Beylorussia and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad took over swaths of eastern Poland. Polish minorities such as the Germans were removed from Poland in 1945. Much of the 1939-1945 Polish history remains to be uncovered, such as resistance units, and the uprising of the Home Army and the suppression by the Soviets. This book begins down that path, however as a use to Holocaust deniers or those who want to see Jewish suffering relegated to the side it also presents a helpful tool, and that is tragic.

Seth J. Frantzman

This 200+ page book is certainly worth reading and having it in one's own personal library for future reference. There are not enough books written about the WWII experience of Gentile Poles under German occupation. The Polish nation was targeted for annihilation. Much is written about the Jewish people's suffering
and not enough about the suffering of the Christian Poles. Who suffered more is not the issue....... both went through terrifying experiences !!!

I highly recommend this book especially for all those who have a short attention span or are short on time particularly in today's hectic times.

We all heard of the 5-6 million Jews murdered by the Germans, but almost no one has heard of the 2-3 million Poles also murdered by the Germans. Lukas shows that this included nearly one half of all educated Poles. Overall, Lukas goes into considerable detail about the Polish tragedy. Attempts to equate the German treatment of Poles with the earlier prewar Polish treatment of Jews, Germans, and Ukrainians are dastardly lies. To begin with, Poland's minorities were hardly victims. They often provoked Polish counteraction through their sabotage of the Polish state. NEVER, under any circumstances, were large numbers of Poland's minorities killed by Poles. The living conditions of Poland's minorities in prewar Poland were a paradise compared with the living conditions of the Poles under the German occupation. Far from being an incipient Polish crime, the proposed mass population transfer of Jews also enjoyed the support of Zionists such as Vladimir Jabotynsky. Finally, there is no comparison whatsoever with the proposed or actual transfer of an unwanted population with the mass genocide of the same.

While most people are familiar with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrated against the Jews in Europe in the Second World War, fewer people are aware that Hitler's homicidal policies extended to the Polish people, as well. Author Richard C. Lukas does an excellent job depicting the nature of the German occupation of Poland in 1939-1944, which resulted in the death of over 3 million Polish citizens who were not Jews. For example, many readers will be surprised to find that the first mass executions committed by the Nazis during the war were against Polish intellectuals and clergy in late 1939 and that the first victims gassed at Auschwitz were Polish civilians. The author also puts a great deal of effort into examining the state of Polish-Jewish relations under the German occupation, as well as the development of the Polish resistance. Overall, this book should help to ameliorate some of the erroneous historiography that has evolved over the years about the Holocaust and lead to a more nuanced view of that catastrophic event.

Forgotten Holocaust consists of seven chapters, beginning with a discussion of the German occupation of Poland. This section details German atrocities against the Poles from A to Z, including street-executions, round-ups, kidnappings, etc. The author also makes the point about how troubling it was for this deeply Catholic country to have their pleas ignored by the pro-German pope in Rome (although the author goes easy on Pope Pius XII - easier than he deserves). In the end, 22 percent of Poland's population died during the German occupation - the greatest percentage loss of any nation in the Second World War. The second chapter covers the Polish Government in Exile and the origins of the underground resistance. Although this chapter is short, it tells a great deal about the internal politics that affected the evolution of the Polish resistance - insights which are usually lacking from other histories that prevent a more homogenized appearance. Chapter three deals with military operations conducted by the underground. One number that I hadn't seen elsewhere was the large number of resistance fighters eliminated in 1942-44 by the Gestapo - upwards of 60,000. Chapter four covers civilian resistance and collaboration (or lack of). The author notes that unlike the German occupation in Western countries, the Germans made no effort to create a collaborationist government in Poland.

Chapters five and six cover the relationship of Poles and Jews during the German occupation. The author strives to fight against the common mis-conception (aided by Steve Spielberg in Schindler's List) that the Polish Government was anti-Semitic and that Poles routinely collaborated with the Germans to annihilate the Jews. In this regard, the author is fairly successful in disputing these slanderous characterizations of Polish collaboration with the Holocaust, but he tends to go off the deep end in trying to refute every charge of anti-Semitism leveled against Poles in the Second World War. Clearly, there were cases where individuals Poles made statements or conducted acts that were inimical to Jewish interests (the author also notes the reverse as well, such as Polish Jews who joined the Anders Army to escape the Soviet Union and then deserted as soon as they reached Palestine). Furthermore, there is also little doubt that Polish Catholicism was reluctant to cooperate with Polish Jews who were openly sympathetic with Communism, viewing them as the vanguard of Soviet imperialism. The charges and counter-charges get a bit tedious in these sections and at best, the issue is left unresolved.

The final chapter covers the Warsaw Uprising. Although not a blow-by-blow account, there was some interesting material herein about weapons stockpiles held by the Home Army, as well as some insight into the German leadership. Overall, this book adds to our understanding of the Second World War in Eastern Europe and should contribute to correcting some of the broad generalizations which have obscured the truth about Nazi extermination policies.

Norman Davies' `God's Playground' is a rather concise history of Poland. It should be compulsory reading for everyone, who wants to find out about this part of the world. I don't think there is any better.

Davies quite rightly anticipates in his preface that the book's title might raise an eyebrow. And it did. When I originally picked it up, I assumed that the title related to the (then Polish) Pope in Rome. The real reason behind the title is explained in the preface of Volume 1. In any case, it does seem to fit the subject of study perfectly.

The first part of the book deals with Polish history right up to 1945, starting off with essays on life in the three partitions between 1772 and 1918. Davies follows this up with industrialisation and the changes in population structure before moving onto descriptions of the various state entities on Polish Territory. 1848 was an important date revolution-wise for a number of European states. Although there was some of this on Polish Territory, nothing came off it.
Poland's re-establishment as a separate state in 1918 indeed appears to be the result of a `fluke' rather than by design. The 1918-39 period is marked by the upheaval you would find in almost any new state. On top of that, Poland had to deal with the Sovietunion and Nazi Germany, which in 1939 partitioned the country yet again.
The 1939-45 period must be the darkest part of Poland's history. If Nazi Germany had succeeded, there would be no Polish people left today.
Following the end of WWII in 1945, the Sovietunion succeeded in hanging onto `its bit' of Poland with the country being compensated with German territory in the West. Davies quite rightly points out that the subsequent evacuation of the German population was decided by the Allied Powers and not by Poland herself. The loss of life involved in the process was indeed regrettable. However, as a result of this `move to the West', Poland found herself in a rather unique position geographically and with next to no potential minority conflicts.

Part 2 of the book deals with Poland since 1945. It would appear that communism never really gained a firm foothold in Poland, which should not really be a surprise given that communism never delivered the goodies - not just not in Poland but nowhere else either.
The single most important event in recent Polish history was the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, who is often credited as the moral power behind the end of communism in Eastern Europe. Solidarnosc and General Jaruzelski seem to be just sideshows. However, the emergence of the former rang the bell of the end of communism in Poland, whilst the latter prevented an invasion of the Red Army and set the conditions for Poland to emerge into the 1990s as a free state (for the first time in 300 years). These days, Poland is just another `normal' state in Europe. By joining both NATO and the EU, she has insured herself against falling back in history.

Davies meticulously records Poland's history right up to EU entry and he does an excellent job. What I am missing is a look into the future. I would be surprised indeed, if Davies didn't have a view on where Poland is heading. But apart from that, this book is excellent.

Pros:
As far as I can tell this book has been written objectively and describes the history of Poland in detail. For me it filled a huge gap in my knowledge of what happened in Poland and in general in Eastern Europe in the last 1000 years. The book is filled with excerpts from poems, ancient documents and first hand accounts of events which make it a very interesting read. The maps and illustrations do an excellent job. I do not know of any other alternatives which will desribe the polish history in such detail.


Cons:
At times this book flows lucidly and at other times it becomes a rambling of very dry facts and a listing of names etc which reminded of me of school history textbooks that used to drive me crazy. My other beef with the book is that there is no structure to it which allows you to understand what is going on. Imagine a movie which is made by assembling various shots together but has not been edited to ensure a logical progression of events. Only when you have gone thru everything do you really understand the entire movie. This is true of both the volumes. It goes into extreme detail about events without first describing what the event was. To exacerbate this, the book assumes that you have a knowledge of events that happened in Europe in the last 1000 years and frequently draws upon them to explain other things in polish history.

The last problem is that this book claims to have been revised and updated in 2005. Unfortunately this is true for only a couple of chapters in the second volume of the book. The first volume still reads like it was written in 1980s. Also there are at least a hundred minor editorial errors in the volume 2 which take away from a pleasurable reading experience.

Desribe the cons I would still recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the history of Poland.

As Norman Davies himself writes in the preface, writing about history of another country is not an easy task. However, he seems to have done a great job, especially when one considers the amount of bibliography material available only in Polish.

Being Polish myself, and an amateur historian, I have read many books about Polish history - but this is the first one I read in English. I am very pleasantly suprised, and would rank it among the top in its category.

The fact that the writer is not Polish, nor of any country whose history and present have been recently shaped by it is not a handicap, on the contrary, it guarantees that the book is unbiased.

Final verdict: a very good book

What more can i say the best historical account of polands history so if that what you wanna read about what are you waiting for hard to remember it all so you can also check out adam zamoyski's the polish way ive read them both and it really helps you get a good understanding

With bracing clarity Norman Davies tells the story of non-Germanic Central Europe located between two voracious empires, Germany and Russia. The narrative is rich in detail and entertaining, yet it is impeccably scholarly. Few history books measure up to it.