Poland Books

I thought this book was an ok read, but I wouldn't request just any old person to read it. I really liked how the people in the book explained the Holocaust and how it affected their lives. It amazed me what these people had to go through just to try to live and have a normal life. I also liked how the people explained what they did to live in specific details. What I didn't like about the book is how the people would talk about stuff a person like me would want to hear about, like, "your doing this for Poland",I mean not to be stuburn but I wanted to hear more about blood and gore. So that's my review, and thats my story and I'm stickin to it.

From time to time, there are vague and unsubstantiated accusations that Poles did not do enough to assist the Jews during the German occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust. Others gloss over the 3 million Polish gentiles murdered by the Germans during WWII. This book is a collection of eyewitness accounts of both the Holocaust and of Polish assistance to Jews. And, remember, that in Poland, unlike other German-occupied countries, the death penalty was imposed for the slightest assistance to Jews.

Richard C. Lukas has provided a detailed anthology of Poles who had undergone the brutal German conquest and occupation of Poland during WWII. The reader of this book becomes immediately aware of the fact that not only Jews but also gentile Poles suffered constant humiliation, privation, torture and large-scale death in the hands of the German Nazi occupant. The testimony of Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski (pp. 139-142) is especially revealing in that it includes discussion of his experiences as an inmate of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Henryk Wolinski (pp. 177-181) provides detail about his involvement in the aid of the Polish underground (AK) to Jews during their Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943. Wolinski soundly refutes charges that the AK did not provide more arms to the Jews because of anti-Semitic attitudes. He shows that the AK always had a severe shortage of arms, even a year later, when it came out in open warfare against the Germans.

This book includes mention of seldom-discussed factors tending to limit Polish aid to fugitive Jews. This not only includes the German-imposed death penalty for the slightest Polish assistance to Jews, but also the danger of fugitive Jews denouncing both would-be Polish rescuers and other Jews currently being hidden (Jackowski, p. 77; Kierszniewski, p. 90).

The careful (or even cursory) reader of this book can easily see that it has been egregiously misrepresented by he Publisher's Weekly review posted above. The claim that prewar and interwar Polish anti-Semitism had been ignored can be dispelled just by looking in the index (p. 194) which shows it discussed in no less than ten pages! The claim that prewar Polish Jews experienced "daily brutality and prejudice" is very much debatable. Based on direct personal experience, Januszewski (p. 79) points out that, while anti-Semitic legislation and incidents definitely occurred, most Poles got along well with Jews. He is of the opinion that prewar Polish anti-Semitism had been exaggerated. Wolinski, widely respected in both Polish and Jewish circles, is of the opinion that Polish anti-Semitism tended to die down in the face of common misfortunes caused by the German occupant (p. 178).

Of course, when they occurred, Polish-Jewish prejudices had been mutual, as candidly admitted by one Jewish scholar cited by Lukas (p. 9). Elsewhere, the Dubiks (p. 64) suggest that Polish anti-Semitism had been fueled by the prewar Jewish dominance of commerce and by the postwar Jewish over-representation in the hated Communist police establishment. Jackowski (p. 76) suggests that Polish anti-Semitism had been much stronger in eastern than in central Poland owing to the large number of Jews who had collaborated with the invading Soviet Communist forces. In fact, Czelny (p. 40) provides an eyewitness account of a group of Jewish militiamen guarding a group of Polish soldiers who had been disarmed by the invading Soviet armies.

The Publisher's Weekly review insinuates that Lukas was expressing an anti-Semitic opinion by suggesting that Jews were largely passive during the Holocaust itself. In fact, Jewish passivity has been discussed by numerous authors, including Jewish ones. For instance, the eminent Jewish psychiatrist, Bruno Bettelheim, cited by Lukas (p. 11), came out strongly against Jewish passivity. Does this make Bettelheim an anti-Semite in spite of himself? Furthermore, none of the authors of this volume presents Jewish passivity in any sort of pejorative manner other than perhaps the fact that most Jews seemed to be in denial about what was happening to them for a long time. Martin (pp. 117-118) discusses her experiences with Jews in this regard. Also, for a long time, Jews had tended to think of Germans as a cultured people (p. 47) for whom acts of genocide would be unimaginable. The Poles, in contrast, knew immediately what the Germans had in store for them, as Poland had been the recipient of German aggression for at least the last thousand years. For this reason alone, Poles were more prone to take up arms than the Jews.

I have just finished reading this book. I shed many a tear.
It is simply amazing that Janina survived all the horrors she faced and still appreciates what life has given her. A remarkable, honest and hard working woman who asked for very little other than freedom and to work alone. I would dearly love to hug this lady and to thank her for her courage. I would also like to thank Tim for making the effort to write this book.

This book was read to me by my teacher who is the youngest brother of Timothy.My teacher has also told me more things about Janina.In the book Tim makes things easy and understandable for an adult or a teen but,some parts needs to be explained to the majority of the kids by an adult or someone who understands that part.I think it is a great book after all.

The Persian Blanket: The Life Of Janina Milek by Tim Chappell is the true story of one woman's determination and spirit. Born in Poland in 1921, Janina Milek and her family were sent to Siberia in the winter of 1940. She worked in labor camps for two years, then spent eight years as a refugee in camps in Uzbekistan, Persia, Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika. At each stage of her journey, members of her family left her - whether succumbing to death, left behind, or striking out on other roads. In 1950, she came to Western Australia alone, and formed a connection with author Tim Chappell. A heart-wrenching life experience, reflecting a stirring testimony to the strength of human will.

This is an amazing story that depicts the strength of a young woman in an impossible situation who relied on her bravery and intelligence.

The latest addition to the Mercury House "NEA Heritage & Preservation" series, Running Through Fire: How I Survived The Holocaust by Zosia Goldberg is a welcome and highly recommended contribution to the growing library of Holocaust literature, memoirs, and biographies. Zosia Goldberg was a Polish Jew living within the warsaw Ghetto when she was rejected by a fellow Jew who cursed her in Yiddish and spat upon her to die among the "goyim" (non-jews). Taken that incident as a sign from God, Zosia escaped from the Ghetto and posed as a Gentile in order to survive the Nazi Holocaust that led to the almost complete extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish community. Running Through Fire is a gripping story of narrow escapes, help from unlikely sources, bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, and a dramatic struggle against human folly on the one hand and human depravity on the other. After surviving World War II and the Holocaust, Zosia came to America, married, and then moved to Caracas, Venezuela and worked in the garment business. Returning to America after her husband's death, she now lives in Florida where she was materially assisted by poet, novelist and critic in recording her life experiences for the benefit of future generations.

Zosia Goldberg traces her experiences in prewar Poland, war-torn Poland, and then wartime Germany (as a mislabeled forced Polish laborer).

Goldberg tacitly attests to the fact that the prewar sympathy of Polish Jews towards Communism (the Zydokomuna) was widespread: "When I was going to school, I had feelings for communism, like all the young ones." (p. 7). She also frequently mentions her Communist-involved relatives (p. 8, 16, 29-30, 33). She absurdly refers to all prewar Polish political parties, excepting Pilsudski's, as Nazi parties (p. 7).

In her ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, Celia Heller would have us believe that prewar assimilated Polish Jews suffered just as much from anti-Semitism as did the much more numerous non-assimilated Polish Jews. In contrast, Goldberg writes: "I did not suffer much, but the Jews in Poland did. Especially if you had a Jewish accent and could not speak Polish, people would always say hurtful things, like: `Dirty Jew.' With my dark eyes and hair, I never heard that I was a Jew. They called me a Gypsy instead--admiringly!" (p. 9). (Of course, this was generally true elsewhere. The relative infrequency of anti-Semitism in the west, compared to that in eastern Europe, owed less to the virtue of tolerance presumably possessed by westerners and more to the assimilated state of western Jewry).

Goldberg herself experienced hatred of exceptional virulence not from Poles but from her unassimilated fellow Polish Jews. She comments: "There was a Jew with a big beard who I had never seen before, and I went over to him and asked, `What's happening? Could you tell me?' I could not speak Yiddish, so I spoke Polish to him. I think he understood me, but he got very angry that I did not speak Yiddish, so he spat on me, `Du solst starben zwischem goyim!'...'May you die amongst the goyim!'" (p. 39).

The author provides a telling commentary on German conduct during the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939: "It was a tremendous job to get to Warsaw because German planes were shooting everyone on the road. Everybody was running, and the Germans were shooting the refugees...They bombed the national shrines." (p. 12).

In referring to Poles and Jews under the German occupation, Goldberg writes: "Everybody stole at the time..." (p. 20). This corrects Jan Tomasz Gross (FEAR) and his tacit mischaracterization of thievery as something in which Poles were the sole perpetrators and Jews the sole victims.

From the earliest days of the German occupation, Goldberg had to contend with Jewish collaborators, including the Jewish Gestapo (pp. 23-24, 44), and Jewish informers who betrayed other Jews (p. 48, 133-134). She describes one roundup of Jews: "Along with the German Nazis, there were Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Jewish police." (p. 34).

Throughout her book, Goldberg makes a sage distinction between ethnic Poles on one hand, and the Volksdeutsche on the other. For example, her experience with the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) was a positive one: "So the police came, a plainclothes Volksdeutscher. The real Polish police would never come. The Germans would not trust them because the real Polish police would do anything possible against the Germans." (p. 62).

While in the Warsaw Ghetto itself, Goldberg observed the arrival of some German Jews, and commented on their behavior: "One day these German Jews were marching off to work past the SS men on guard. These German Jews were raising their hands, hollering, `Heil Hitler!' and the SS men did not even answer them, did not look at them, did not even spit at them." (p. 24).

For all the talk about Poles and Jews being "unequal victims", it becomes obvious that Germans didn't see the Poles as having any more inherent right to live than the Jews. When in Germany for forced labor, Zosia Goldberg, concealing her Jewishness and saying that she was a Pole, went to a German doctor to treat her hepatitis. His reaction was revealing: "'You are from there?' he said. `All these Jews, these Poles and Jews, they should die. They should all be killed. I don't know why we are using them for workers.' `You are very sick', he then said. `You think I will give you medicine? You are very much mistaken. We need medicine for our soldiers, for our Germans. For foreigners--for Poles and Jews--nothing! The Poles, the Russians, and the Jews--nothing!'" (pp. 113-114).

While a forced laborer at Erfurt, her fellow Polish forced laborers kept her Jewishness a secret and helped her (p. 147). Earlier, while seriously ill, Goldberg had been helped in Germany by a Polish woman who blamed the Jews for systematically cheating Poles (pp. 115-116). This adds to the numerous other accounts of ostensibly anti-Semitic Poles helping Jews.

Goldberg inadvertently touched on the Pilsudski-Dmowski factionalism as to who was Poland's worst enemy: "Pilsudski had made believe that he was with the Germans against the Russians because he wanted the independence of Poland. He did not like the Germans. As a matter of fact, he hated them all. He only wanted Poland to be independent." (p. 119).

Goldberg alludes to the anti-Christian character of Nazism: "While I was in prison, I always prayed regular Catholic prayers, not because I wanted to pray, but because it was forbidden. Prayers were not allowed. It was against Hitler." (p. 110).

Goldberg repeatedly found that older Germans were less likely to practice Nazi anti-Semitic polices than younger ones (p. 50, 67, 95, 99, 121). But one of them opined that she could return to Warsaw, which would in future be part of Germany (p. 67). Although Goldberg doesn't develop this further, her experiences show once again that, while virulent German anti-Semitism is a relatively recent development, German Polonophobia is of ancient vintage.

Gripping and beautifully written. Another powerful holocaust story of survival in the most extreme and terrifying conditions. Liana is to be praised for her courage and deep inner strength. Her story is one of tragedy and hope.

i guess i'm confused. i am sitting here with a copy of "smoke over birkenau" by seweryna szmaglewska, translated from the polish by jadwiga rynas. henry holt and company n.y. copyright 1947. first printing. Did she change her name?

Set down in the middle of Birkenau, an infamous concentration camp, Lili (Liana) tells readers her story of pain, hope, and dispair. Time is lost, and that loss causes many amazing things to happen. Truthful tales of death, life, and living death wrench the reader in every direction manageable. Easily read by any person in their teenage years or older.

Solomon Maimon is known in the history of German Idealism as the person to whom Kant himself attributed the deeper understanding and penetration of the main problems of his Critique of Pure Reason. Moreover Maimon's internal criticism of Transcendental Idealism and his proposed solution to its major, according to him, problem paved the way for the theories of the post Kantian Idealists. So he was one of the thinkers who helped the thansformation of 'critical' to 'dogmatic' idealism. Now this may seem to many a step backward but this is another story.
In this small book just a few pages are devoted to Kant's reception of his manuscrispts. What we have instead is a concise, well written with brevity, wit and humor recounting of the memorable events of his extraordinary life. The form of the narrative is similar to that of a bildungsroman. He tells how he left the confines of his backward, isolated and ridden with prejudices small hometown in Polish Lithouania in search of knowledge.
Maimon was a man of exceptional intelligence and that was obvious not only to himself but also to his countrymen whose high esteem he commanded from a young age due to his excelence in the talmoudic studies. Yet he grew sceptical towards the latter and set out to seek rational and scientific enlightenment in Germany. In this endeavour he even managed because of his destitution to follow a beggar for six whole months, "two such heterogeneous persons were nowhere to be met in the world, I was an educated rabbi, he was an idiot".
His story from successes to misfortunes hovers from the hillarious to the tragic and reveals a personality of a genius whose naivety in social relationships and incistence never to pursue anything but knowledge kept him in almost constant destitution.
It is enjoyable reading and also contains much information about the jewish intellectual world in 18th century Europe.

This autobiography seems to me more important as a historical document than as a work of art. Maimon despite his great intellect and his courage in going where his mind led him does not seem to me to speak of himself or his life with great psychological depth or insight. I too think that he did not understand truly the nature of the Hasidic movement he criticized harshly. Still this is an important work as a document which gives insight into the Jewish world of his time.

This is an amazing book and I am surprised it is not better known. It tells about the life of a Polish Jew who escaped from what he considered the stifling atmosphere of Polish Hasidic life and went to Germany to become part of the German Enlightenment. He translated Kant into Yiddish for the edification of his compatriots back home. The scenes depicting Maimon's marriage at the age of 12 and of Jewish life in eighteenth century Poland are very memorable. Someone told me recently that this book might not actually have been written by Maimon at all but by the "editor," the German writer Karl Philip Moritz, who apparently had a similar life. Perhaps that is why the book has not been reprinted.

This book was a particularly slow read for such a short book. It was a dull story with little resolution at the end. We read this book as a book club. At our meeting, we sat mystified as to what to discuss. I did not enjoy this attempt at a novel, and would probably not recommend it unless you have time to read it more than once to try to follow the stale story.

Jay Basu keeps you mesmerized in this sad but touching story. This is Basu's first novel, and what a splendid job he's done. The story had a few twists, and it was hard to put down. Gracian is a memorable protagonist. He escapes his harsh world of working in a coal mine by wandering out into the woods at night to watch the stars, despite the constant presence of Nazi guards who could kill him. He and the other characters, including his coal mine partner, offer tremendous inspiriation to keep dreaming when life is cruel and seemingly hopeless.

"The Stars Can Wait" by Jay Basu, Henry Holt and Company, New York 2002.

Jay Basu has written an impressive first novel dealing with a young boy, Gracian Solka, coming of age in German occupied Silesia, 1939-1940. Germans in Silesia is nothing new. The Germans have been in Silesia since at least 1210, when they were invited to colonize the swampy land (slightly longer than the English colonists in Massachusetts). The young boy speaks German and Polish, as he was taught by his mother. The older brother, Pawel, however, was of an age between the two World Wars, that he refused to learn German.

Gracian, at 15 years old, likes to sneak out in the middle of the night to gaze upon the stars. He has a special place, a clearing in the forest, but, of course, he risks being shot for violating curfew. His older brother, Pawel Solka, had given Gracian a book on astronomy, which Gracian employs to learn the names of all the constellations. To protect Gracian, Pawel has to nail the window shut, so that Gracian can no longer sneak out. As Gracian works in the coal mines (Silesia is famous for its coal), he learns the story of how Pawel was disgraced by having to serve a sentence in a German prison for smuggling, across the German/Poland border. Gracian begins to understand some of the roots of family conflicts and animosity. (Interestingly, since colonial days in Massachusetts, smuggling has never been disgraceful. Even in recent times, during Prohibition, an Irish-American became rich smuggling in whiskey; his son became President of the United States.)

Using his German speaking skills, Gracian helps Pawel to land a job in another, more distant coal mine. The owners, bosses and foremen are all Germans, Pawel now has job, too, and this pacifies their mother. Things appear to be settling down. Gracian expands his star-watching to people watching, using the telescope that was another gift from his brother, Pawel. Towards the end, Gracian believes that his star watching/people watching might have been responsible for the death of Pawel's girl-friend, Anna. Finally, at the end, Gracian puts away his book and telescope, as with St. Paul: "...when I became a man, I put away childish things". (I Corinthians, 13:7). Jay Basu shows excellent insight into growing up.

I read this book when my Mother mentioned that it described her childhood. She was one of the orphans who lived through this saga. She was in tears reading it because it brought back so many good and bad memories. I was in tears realizing what my Mother went through. The details explained so much to me about why my Mother does certain things in the way that she does...like ironing sheets because that was the only way to kill the bugs on the sheets in Africa. This is a well written saga - almost a diary for my Mom.

This book was very informative and especially interesting because my husband's parents were part of this transplantation of Polish refugees. They were treated horribly by the Russians and I am embarassed that we (the Allies) did nothing about it. But then, war was war, and refugees were a fact of life.

Although this book was written many years ago it helps to keep us focused on the fact that the Jews were not the only ones trampled on during the war at the hands of Hitler; the Poles were trampled on at the hands of the Allies.

I was impressed with the realistic quality of Krolikowski's story telling. He weaves in beautiful scenery and then covers many aspects of events including the mudane difficult life and many horrible, shocking events, as well as describing some political motives behind some events, and estimating the number of people affected and Soviet strategy to make it difficult to find and/or count everybody. A very emotional read for me. Everybody knows about Soviet troops waiting at the gates of Warsaw and allowing the Nazis to slaughter the Polish people, but this story about deportations to the outermost regions of the Soviet Union resulting in almost a million Polish deaths and 380,000 orphans is a must read.

One of the great Treblinka stories, though there have been relatively few unfortanetly, this one ranks right up there with Richard Glazar's book "Trap With A Green Fence", referring to the fences that were fitted with pines and shrubs so no one could see in or out of the camp, even being used to camoflauge sections of the camp from each other. A very detailed book, it was written right after the war so the facts had to still be fresh in his mind. The book is a hard one to read but also interesting, even psycologically, as many great books are from this era of the holocaust. But everyone knows Auschwitz, and terrible that place was. But life in Treblinka was a bit different from many other camps. Many prisoners wore fashionable clothes,taken from the sorting piles of those who had been killed in the camp's diesel engine gas chambers, a far cry from the Zyclon B which was to be used extensively at camps like Auschwitz and Majdanek, not the striped pajamas that many have seen in archival footage from concentration camps. Treblinka extermination camp was a world unto itself. The tales of SS men like Kurt Franz, Kuttner, Miete,Mentz, and Hirthreiter, among a few others, are spine chilling and just udderly sadistic. All in all, you need to read this book, even if you arent totally familiar with Nazi camps. But these extermination camps, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, they were much different from any other camp in occupied Europe during WW2. Read this book!

Samuel Willenberg is one of the few Jews who escaped from the Treblinka death camp. He provides gruesome details of what took place there. About 870,000 Jews were gassed or shot. The bodies were buried, and eventually re-exhumed and burned, up to 18,000 at a time, in massive open-air pyres. The book includes a sketch map of the Treblinka death camp, and even a photograph of German earthmoving equipment used to unearth the earlier-buried bodies.

When he was first deported to Treblinka, Willenberg heard remarks from Poles about "getting turned into soap" (p. 39). He neglects to mention the fact that Poles also used such remarks in reference to themselves (as later Jews did to each other). (It subsequently turned out that this was largely apocryphal. There was, however, a factory in Danzig (present-day Gdansk) in which Germans did use the bodies of mostly Poles to make soap.)

After the Jewish revolt and escape from Treblinka, the Germans' hunt was so intense that two of the Poles who helped Willenberg had already experienced a German search of their domiciles (p. 144, 147). He noticed how Germans were checking all traffic on the roads (p. 145), and also encountered a poster that warned Poles against helping any of the "typhus-bearing Jewish bandits" (p. 149). Some Poles approached by Willenberg for help were obviously so frightened that they immediately departed from him (p. 25, 28, 144). But, in spite of the death penalty for the slightest Polish assistance to Jews, local Polish peasants helped Willenberg on no less than nine separate occasions in the first days after his escape (pp. 143-on).

In time, Willenberg became a member of the AL, whose Communist nature he denied (p. 181) and, for awhile, the AK. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising, repeated accusations of the NSZ killing fugitive Jews (p. 178), and then said the same thing about the AK. Interestingly, Willenberg reports a discussion with an AK officer, who produced a list of Jewish Gestapo informers about to be liquidated, and with Willenberg on the list! The list had been found in possession of a Jew who was accused of being a Gestapo agent, based on the fact that he had been caught living with a German woman (pp. 182-183). Taken literally, this suggests that at least some cases of the AK killing innocent fugitive Jews was due to faulty intelligence. (Of course, with regards to wartime espionage, underground organizations don't have the luxury of conducting detailed investigations, and some innocent people get killed because of mistaken inferences). However, the very fact that Willenberg became an openly-Jewish member of the AK, and was allowed to survive a face-to-face accusation of an AK officer, alone should soundly refute the accusation of some (e. g., Yaffa Eliach, Oskar Pinkus) that the AK was implementing some sort of secret plan to kill all remaining Polish Jews!

One particularly malicious Polonophobic Holocaust myth is the one about the Nazis' choice of Poland as the site of the death camps because Poles welcomed them or at least wouldn't object much to them. No doubt, this libelous canard is facilitated by the countless misleading accounts in the western press of "Polish death camps". Ironically, not only didn't the Germans seek any form of "permission" from the conquered and despised Polish untermenschen, but actually kept the death camps a jealously-guarded secret. So extreme was this secrecy that a German woman who had inadvertently been shipped to Treblinka was deliberately killed in order to protect the secret of extermination (p. 30). And to add plausibility to the fraud about Jews only being resettled for forced labor, and Treblinka only being a labor camp, the Nazis actually HAD built a nearby labor camp, Treblinka 1, to which they had been sending Poles and later some of the deported Jews (p. 9, 101, 202). Periodically, Treblinka 1 inmates were dispatched to the Treblinka death camp, but never the other way around!

Certain authors (e. g., Yisrael Gutman, David Engel) have accused the Polish government-in-exile of delaying, and then understating, its reporting on the numbers of murdered Polish Jews. In his introduction, Bartoszewski puts Willenberg's experience in perspective, making it clear that only a trickle of substantive information ever escaped those extermination camps in which Polish Jews were being murdered: "Together the four death camps exterminated over 2 million Jews; we know of only two survivors from Belzec, three from Chelmno, sixty-four from Sobibor, and around forty from Treblinka." (p. 9). Even the indirect clue afforded by the odor of vast numbers of bodies being burned at Treblinka did not become reality until early 1943 (p. 17). In stark contrast to the Jews, Germans usually murdered Poles publicly. So why invoke nefarious motives to explain the fact that the Polish government-in-exile knew much more about the extent of Polish deaths than Jewish ones, and did so much earlier?

Another anti-Polish canard is the one about Germans choosing Poland as the site of the death camps so that they could conveniently recruit numerous Polish volunteers to assist in the extermination of Jews. In actuality, Willenberg doesn't mention even ONE Polish collaborator serving the Germans at Treblinka! He elaborates on the work of Ukrainian collaborators numerous times, describing them as follows: "While they disliked Poles, White Russians, and Cossacks, they reserved a sizzling, boundless hatred for the Jews." (p. 56).

An exceptional account of the Nazi death camp at Treblinka.

When one visits Treblinka today, it is difficult to imagine the atrocities and slaughter depicted in this excellent book. My own personal visit to Treblinka was on a Summer's day when the sky was blue and the birds were singing. The lasting impression left on me was one of utter isolation, emptiness and an absolute thunderous silence surrounding me.

Gone are the buildings and gas chambers, long destroyed by the Nazis in their attempt to extinguish any memory or evidence of the genocide that was perpetrated here. Apart from the symbolic cemetery and memorials and the remains of the railway station where the innocent Jews were disembarked prior to their massacre only minutes later, there is little to see apart from the location of the mass graves and the vast empty space amongst the surrounding trees where the Nazi extermination camp once stood.

Each individual stone memorial at the site representing one Jewish community whose members perished at Treblinka. Photographs, diagrams and maps are provided which afford a valuable context and framework to assist in the readers' understanding.

It is fitting therefore that Samuel Willenberg, one of the very few survivors of the Treblinka holocaust, has been able to provide us with his harrowing account of what actually went on there. The vast open spaces that I personally saw are here filled with maps and detailed descriptions of the hell erased by the Nazi genocide machine that killed so many innocent Jews. The procedures at this death camp from the moment that the innocents arrived at the still visible railway platform are documented in detail, until their wholesale slaughter in the gas chambers and the burning of their bodies in the burial pits not so far away.

This moving account of the functioning of the Treblinka death camp not only speaks out for those whose lives were destroyed and who cannot speak for themselves, but it also covers the heartbreaking daily lives of those prisoners who were forced to function as vital cogs in the Nazi death machine. Further to this we have a commendable account of the uprising against the Nazis amongst these prisoners, many of whom were also killed. Very few in fact survived to escape. One of those who did survive, escape and manage to bring this moving account to our attention was Samuel Willenberg.

The author's memoirs of Treblinka extend from October 1942 until the rebellion and his escape in August 1943, when he went into hiding in Warsaw and took an active personal part in the armed Polish underground resistance against the Nazis until the quelling of the Warsaw Uprising.

This is a must read on this particular section of the Holocaust. Of some interest is the portrayal of the underlying Polish-Jewish relations during the Nazi occupation. This is a story that will chill you to the bone.

Great for examples of her work but I found the text tedious. It reads as if it was written by someone studying for a masters degree in art history. As an average punter I just need basic text.

If you are intrigued by the art work of Tamara de Lempicka and want to find out more about the artist, this is a great place to start. Her art is displayed in many, large format color prints which appear throughout the book accompanied bu comments on her education and dedication as an artist. Tamara, the woman, is revealed as a passionate participant in the creative soup of pre-WWII Europe. Her life, her loves and the society in which she moved become the backdrop for the work of this reknown artist. I felt as if I knew her better when I finished the book and wanted to rush to the nearest gallery or museum to view her work in the original.

If you are intrigued by the art work of Tamara de Lempicka and want to find out more about the artist, this is a great place to start. Her art is displayed in many, large-format color prints which appear throughout the book accompanied by comments on her education and dedication to her art. Tamara, the woman, is revealed as a passionate participant in the creative soup of pre-WWII Europe. Her life, her loves and the society in which she moved become the backdrop for the work of this reknown artist. I felt as if I knew her better when I finished the book and wanted to rush to the nearest gallery or museum to view her work in the original.

This is a very good biography of a great Polish hero, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, best known to Americans for his services to the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Kosciuszko is credited with having devised the fieldworks at the battle of Saratoga, a series of brilliantly-devised redoubts and other defensive positions that were instrumental in defeating Burgoyne's army. Later during the war he lent his considerable talents to the design of West Point; he also strove (with less success) to conquer "Ninety-Six," a British fortress near the South Carolina-Georgia border. For his native country, however, Kosciuszko achieved immortality as the leader of the uprising of 1794, the doomed (but glorious) final attempt to stave off absorption of the Kingdom of Poland into Russian, Prussian and Austrian territory. This book is well written, well-researched and entertaining, but I must mention three noteworthy faults: first, its total absence of any statement critical of Kosciuszko; second, its relatively skimpy coverage of non-American events; and third, its failure (despite listing virtually every other tribute to Kosciuszko) to mention that Mount Kosciuszko - named by nineteenth century Polish patriots exploring southern New South Wales - is the highest mountain in Australia (no small matter).

Matherson has done a very good review of this book here on Amazon, and I must completely agree with its content. This book is very well researched and footnoted. Pula clearly has thoroughly reviewed both original source material and secondary sources. Although Pula reports the less flattering things said about Kosciuszko, he dismisses them as biased. Meanwhile, any flattering thing said of Kosciuszko is thoroughly reported. The result sometimes reads as much like hagiography as biography.

We spend entirely too much time reading about the southern campaign of the revolutionary war, including focusing many pages on a stage of the campaign for which there is no documentation about Kosciuszko's whereabouts. After this, Kosciuszko's rebellion in Poland is treated in a somewhat cursory manner. Unfortuntely, Pula has failed to explain to us well enough how someone so consistently described as meek, amiable, humble, and unconcerned with self-promotion could end up being granted powers over Poland approximating that of absolute monarch. I left this book thirsting for more information about Kosciuszko's leadership in Poland, and wishing for considerably less detail about the british defenses at Ninety-six.

That said, this seems to be the best written, most thoroughly researched, most completely documented biography of Kosciuszko available in the English language today.

James S. Pula's book is an excellent source for those interested in the American and/or Polish History. It is devoted to Thaddeus Kosciuszko's life and accomplishments. At the same time it presents a brief history of Poland dating from prehistoric times, through times of monarchy, Liberum Veto, anarchy to the three partitions of Poland and historical events up to 1817-the year of Kosciuszko's death. The book is also an examination of some major battles of the American War of Independence (defense of Philadelphia, Saratoga, West Point, etc.). It contains very interesting pieces of correspondence between Kosciuszko and his best American friends-Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Gen. Horatio Gates. Kosciuszko's biography is presented with careful attention to detail. Pula presents many facts from Thaddeus' personal life that are not widely known and which make the Polish-American hero very human and very likable. Also, it contains three appendices: Kosciuszko's Will, and translations of Kosciuszko's Act of Insurrection, and Polaniec Manifesto (Uniwersal Polaniecki). Overall, the book is well-researched, with very interesting content, and written in simple (and elegant) English. It is a great reading material for scholars and high school students alike.