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I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children's Hospital and the Jewish Resistance
The author was a young Jewish doctor at the children's hospital in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940 to 1942. When the hospital was forced to close the children that had survived were taken to the death-camps. Blady-Szwajger became a reluctant courier for the resistance. She left the ghetto and began to carry paper money pinned into her clothing to those in hiding. She and her flat-mate pretended to be good-time girls having fun and threw parties to disguise the coming and going of their male visitors. This heroic memoir pays tribute to all the men and women who paid with their lives for the safety of others.
184 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 27, 2019
Adina Blady Szwajger's memoir of her life in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation reads like an interview. She was old and ill when she finally decided to tell her story and she does it without any filters or artistry often admitting to being confused about chronology and detail. There's a sense of both rawness and hurry as if she's frightened of dying before finishing her story. She was a nurse in one of the children's hospitals in the ghetto and after the deportations and the uprising worked for the Jewish underground outside the ghetto. Her young husband can't stand the strain of hiding anymore and when the Gestapo offer a limited number of Jews passage to Palestine for a large sum of money he volunteers. All these Jews were taken immediately to Auschwitz.
Five stars all the way to Adina who comes across as an amazing young woman. However, I think this is a book for readers who already have some knowledge of the events in Warsaw during WW2 and not a good place to start because of its fragmented nature. She explains at the end why she didn't try to write her memoirs earlier and you realise just how heavy a burden her memories have been to her throughout her life.
Five stars all the way to Adina who comes across as an amazing young woman. However, I think this is a book for readers who already have some knowledge of the events in Warsaw during WW2 and not a good place to start because of its fragmented nature. She explains at the end why she didn't try to write her memoirs earlier and you realise just how heavy a burden her memories have been to her throughout her life.
October 21, 2008
This is one of the most haunting Holocaust memoirs I've read, and I've read a lot of them. The author was a newly minted pediatrician at the Warsaw Ghetto Children's Hospital and went on to sneak over to the Aryan side of the city and join the resistance. Curiously, she writes little about herself -- you know nothing about her life before the war and next to nothing about her family, though she does describe her husband's death and mentions that her mother was deported to Treblinka.
To mention just one of the searing episodes in this story: During the liquidation of the ghetto, as the Nazis were shooting patients and throwing into trucks those that could still walk, Dr. Szwajger went to the tuberculosis ward and gave the children each an overdose of morphine, telling them it would take their pain away. She had promised to stay with the children until the end, so she waited until they all went to sleep, then she ran for her life. But decades later she was haunted by the thought that maybe one or two of them woke up later, alone.
Though this book is frustratingly vague at times and it ends abruptly, I think if I could recommend only five books to someone who wanted to learn about what the Holocaust was like, I Remember Nothing More would be one of them. I applaud the author for her courage to finally tell her story. Very few people are left alive who remember it firsthand; Dr. Szwajger herself died in 1993.
To mention just one of the searing episodes in this story: During the liquidation of the ghetto, as the Nazis were shooting patients and throwing into trucks those that could still walk, Dr. Szwajger went to the tuberculosis ward and gave the children each an overdose of morphine, telling them it would take their pain away. She had promised to stay with the children until the end, so she waited until they all went to sleep, then she ran for her life. But decades later she was haunted by the thought that maybe one or two of them woke up later, alone.
Though this book is frustratingly vague at times and it ends abruptly, I think if I could recommend only five books to someone who wanted to learn about what the Holocaust was like, I Remember Nothing More would be one of them. I applaud the author for her courage to finally tell her story. Very few people are left alive who remember it firsthand; Dr. Szwajger herself died in 1993.
February 25, 2023
"I więcej nic nie pamiętam" autorstwa Adiny Blady-Szwajger to zbiór wspomnień autorki z okresu drugiej wojny światowej. Pani Adina była lekarką w szpitalu w warszawskim getcie, następnie, po wydostaniu się na zewnątrz, łączniczką ŻOB. Pełniła też służbę w szpitalu polowym podczas powstania warszawskiego. Autorka zabiera nas we wstrząsająca podróż, podczas której czytelnik będzie miał okazję przekonać się, z czym wiązało się bycie Żydem w okupowanej Warszawie.
Naprawdę nie wiem, co mam napisać o tej książce. Nie dlatego, że nic po sobie nie pozostawiła w moim umyśle, wręcz przeciwnie. Po prostu boję się, że cokolwiek bym nie napisał, nie będę w stanie oddać w stu procentach emocji, jakie towarzyszyły mi w czasie lektury i natłoku myśli, jakie wciąż mam po skończeniu tej książki. Smutek, gniew, strach, wstyd, ale też wzruszenie, śmiech, a przede wszystkim ogromna ulga, że urodziłem się długo po wojnie.
Największym atutem tej książki jest jej szczerość. Autorka nie ukrywa, że nie jest literatką. Język nie jest wyszukany, a wspomnienia spisane są w sposób chaotyczny, nadaje im to jednak autentyczności. Podczas lektury miałem wrażenie, że autorka siedzi obok i snuje opowieść o swojej tragicznej młodości, co tylko potęgowało odczuwane emocje.
Na długo zostaną też ze mną wspomnienia pani Adiny o polskich warszawiakach. Autorka nie owija w bawełnę, nie boi się przywoływać wspomnień, gdzie Polacy wykazywali się postawą haniebną wobec Żydów. I nie mam tu na myśli ludzi, którzy zwyczajnie bali się o swoje życie, ale szmalcowników, donosicieli, antysemitów czy zwykłych cwaniaków widzących szansę na zarobek w czyjejś krzywdzie.
Szkoda, że książka nie jest czytana powszechnie. Wielu Polakom przydałby się reality check w postaci prawdziwego obrazu społeczeństwa podczas okupacji, w kontraście do romantyzowanej papki, gdzie każdy Polak należał do konspiracji, a wszystkim należy się order Sprawiedliwych wśród Narodów Świata, papki, którą karmieni jesteśmy od najmłodszych lat. A jeśli ktoś podważałby prawdziwość relacji o "złych Polakach", bo przecież boladzy najlebrzi, Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna, niech zastanowi się, czy aby przypadkiem nie słyszał od swoich rodaków, jak to z tymi Ukraińcami to przesada i kto za to wszystko zapłaci, wszędzie te flagi itd.
Polecam zmierzenie się z tą książką. Gdybym był ministrem edukacji, "I więcej nic nie pamiętam" trafiłaby na listę lektur obowiązkowych.
Naprawdę nie wiem, co mam napisać o tej książce. Nie dlatego, że nic po sobie nie pozostawiła w moim umyśle, wręcz przeciwnie. Po prostu boję się, że cokolwiek bym nie napisał, nie będę w stanie oddać w stu procentach emocji, jakie towarzyszyły mi w czasie lektury i natłoku myśli, jakie wciąż mam po skończeniu tej książki. Smutek, gniew, strach, wstyd, ale też wzruszenie, śmiech, a przede wszystkim ogromna ulga, że urodziłem się długo po wojnie.
Największym atutem tej książki jest jej szczerość. Autorka nie ukrywa, że nie jest literatką. Język nie jest wyszukany, a wspomnienia spisane są w sposób chaotyczny, nadaje im to jednak autentyczności. Podczas lektury miałem wrażenie, że autorka siedzi obok i snuje opowieść o swojej tragicznej młodości, co tylko potęgowało odczuwane emocje.
Na długo zostaną też ze mną wspomnienia pani Adiny o polskich warszawiakach. Autorka nie owija w bawełnę, nie boi się przywoływać wspomnień, gdzie Polacy wykazywali się postawą haniebną wobec Żydów. I nie mam tu na myśli ludzi, którzy zwyczajnie bali się o swoje życie, ale szmalcowników, donosicieli, antysemitów czy zwykłych cwaniaków widzących szansę na zarobek w czyjejś krzywdzie.
Szkoda, że książka nie jest czytana powszechnie. Wielu Polakom przydałby się reality check w postaci prawdziwego obrazu społeczeństwa podczas okupacji, w kontraście do romantyzowanej papki, gdzie każdy Polak należał do konspiracji, a wszystkim należy się order Sprawiedliwych wśród Narodów Świata, papki, którą karmieni jesteśmy od najmłodszych lat. A jeśli ktoś podważałby prawdziwość relacji o "złych Polakach", bo przecież boladzy najlebrzi, Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna, niech zastanowi się, czy aby przypadkiem nie słyszał od swoich rodaków, jak to z tymi Ukraińcami to przesada i kto za to wszystko zapłaci, wszędzie te flagi itd.
Polecam zmierzenie się z tą książką. Gdybym był ministrem edukacji, "I więcej nic nie pamiętam" trafiłaby na listę lektur obowiązkowych.
May 30, 2019
Książka, jak skrawki czarnych latawców, przyniesione wiatrem zza murów getta do jadących na karuzeli w czas pięknej warszawskiej niedzieli.
Cieszę się, że została napisana.
Cieszę się, że została napisana.
November 12, 2025
Kiedy sięgnęłam po tą książkę tuż po skończeniu „radość soboty” poczułam bardzo dużą przepaść językową między obiema książkami. Wiem, że tak porównywać nie można, bo jak sama autorka Adina Blady-Szwajger pisze, nie jest ona pisarką.
W pewien sposób się cieszę, że wątek powstania warszawskiego w życiu autorki, został bardzo mocno potraktowany powierzchownie. I tu znów muszę się zgodzić z autorką, która napisała, że tak wiele relacji powstało z powstania, że kolejna jej zdaniem jest zbędna.
Tym samym cała książka w pełni skupia się na życiu w getcie, życiu żydów po aryjskiej stronie. Jest to dla mnie na plus. Mam wrażenie, że każdego roku 1 sierpnia wychodzą coraz to nowe pozycje czytelnicze na temat powstania warszawskiego, a powstanie w getcie jest nadal mało omawiane i komentowane.
W pewien sposób się cieszę, że wątek powstania warszawskiego w życiu autorki, został bardzo mocno potraktowany powierzchownie. I tu znów muszę się zgodzić z autorką, która napisała, że tak wiele relacji powstało z powstania, że kolejna jej zdaniem jest zbędna.
Tym samym cała książka w pełni skupia się na życiu w getcie, życiu żydów po aryjskiej stronie. Jest to dla mnie na plus. Mam wrażenie, że każdego roku 1 sierpnia wychodzą coraz to nowe pozycje czytelnicze na temat powstania warszawskiego, a powstanie w getcie jest nadal mało omawiane i komentowane.
November 24, 2009
This is one of the most powerful memoirs I've read in my lifetime - easily. The fact that the author didn't put much stock in her writing is amazing to me. Almost as amazing as her story. Her story is far different than the "average" Holocaust memoir in that Blady-Szwajgier's experience was not in a concentration camp. Which isn't to say her life during this time was any less terrifying.
You don't want to miss this memoir!
You don't want to miss this memoir!
May 17, 2020
When the war broke out on 1 September 1939 Adina Blady Szwajger was a 22-year-old student in her 16th term at the Faculty of Medicine, Warsaw University in Poland. She had just been married. She was a Jew.
Classes continued up to 4 September 1939 when their professor dismissed them due to the turmoil of war. She and some classmates tried to offer their services to hospitals and first-aid stations but no one needed them there. Eventually, however, she landed in a children’s hospital in Warsaw. Inside the ghetto. Her description of Warsaw at that time was gripping and there is always suffering during war but consider these:
a. she was a young, idealistic woman with motherly instincts;
b. a doctor trained to care for the sick and to save lives;
c. a Jew and therefore among the hunted;
d. in a hospital for sick children, including infants whom the Nazis consider as no better than small mice which must be exterminated; and
e. in an occupied country, during wartime and a long period of great want.
She was in hell. And this hell she painfully tried to share with the world with passages like:
“Every morning, we did the rounds of rooms which were still white but of a whiteness which had become the pallor of death. Every morning, we looked at the distended, deformed bodies, at the expressionless faces, and, with the same horror, we read the ages of those ageless creatures: four, five, six, sometimes ten or twelve. Cavernous eyes stared back at us, eyes so terribly serious and so sad that they seemed to be expressing all the sorrow of two thousand years of Diaspora. Hands lay motionless on the coverlets, children’s tiny hands with bitten fingernails, tanned or pale, those same hands which only a few months back a mother had lovingly kissed and caressed. Children’s hands, always lively and joyful, now powerless and subdued.
“xxx
“That same day, there was a little boy, maybe eight, maybe ten years old, who had been shot in the liver and there was nothing we could do to help him. Somehow I happened to stand next to him. Just then, he opened his eyes, looked at me and stretched out his hand in which he was clutching fifty groszy (the smallest of Polish coins). He said:’Give it to my mamma’—and died.
‘xxx
“I took the morphine upstairs. Dr. Margolis was there and I told her what I wanted to do. So we took a spoon and went to the infants’ room. And just as, during those two years of real work in the hospital, I had bent down over the little beds, so now I poured this last medicine into those tiny mouths. Only Dr. Margolis was with me. And downstairs, there was screaming because the Szaulis (Polish collaborators) and the Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks.
“After that we went in to the older children and told them that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear. They believed us and drank the required amount from the glass. And then I told them to undress, get into bed and sleep. So they lay down and after a few minutes—I don’t know how many—but the next time I went into that room, they were asleep. And then I don’t know what happened after that….”
Translated from the Polish by Tasja Darowska and Danusia Stok.
Classes continued up to 4 September 1939 when their professor dismissed them due to the turmoil of war. She and some classmates tried to offer their services to hospitals and first-aid stations but no one needed them there. Eventually, however, she landed in a children’s hospital in Warsaw. Inside the ghetto. Her description of Warsaw at that time was gripping and there is always suffering during war but consider these:
a. she was a young, idealistic woman with motherly instincts;
b. a doctor trained to care for the sick and to save lives;
c. a Jew and therefore among the hunted;
d. in a hospital for sick children, including infants whom the Nazis consider as no better than small mice which must be exterminated; and
e. in an occupied country, during wartime and a long period of great want.
She was in hell. And this hell she painfully tried to share with the world with passages like:
“Every morning, we did the rounds of rooms which were still white but of a whiteness which had become the pallor of death. Every morning, we looked at the distended, deformed bodies, at the expressionless faces, and, with the same horror, we read the ages of those ageless creatures: four, five, six, sometimes ten or twelve. Cavernous eyes stared back at us, eyes so terribly serious and so sad that they seemed to be expressing all the sorrow of two thousand years of Diaspora. Hands lay motionless on the coverlets, children’s tiny hands with bitten fingernails, tanned or pale, those same hands which only a few months back a mother had lovingly kissed and caressed. Children’s hands, always lively and joyful, now powerless and subdued.
“xxx
“That same day, there was a little boy, maybe eight, maybe ten years old, who had been shot in the liver and there was nothing we could do to help him. Somehow I happened to stand next to him. Just then, he opened his eyes, looked at me and stretched out his hand in which he was clutching fifty groszy (the smallest of Polish coins). He said:’Give it to my mamma’—and died.
‘xxx
“I took the morphine upstairs. Dr. Margolis was there and I told her what I wanted to do. So we took a spoon and went to the infants’ room. And just as, during those two years of real work in the hospital, I had bent down over the little beds, so now I poured this last medicine into those tiny mouths. Only Dr. Margolis was with me. And downstairs, there was screaming because the Szaulis (Polish collaborators) and the Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks.
“After that we went in to the older children and told them that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear. They believed us and drank the required amount from the glass. And then I told them to undress, get into bed and sleep. So they lay down and after a few minutes—I don’t know how many—but the next time I went into that room, they were asleep. And then I don’t know what happened after that….”
Translated from the Polish by Tasja Darowska and Danusia Stok.
July 22, 2012
It isn't slick or graceful. It is stark memory, written as remembered, honest and disjointed. Powerful.
My favorite passages:
" Years have passed since then. Many years. There's no trace in this great modern city of what happened here. Yes, there is a monument.
But not even a single fragment remains of the wall which separated one third of the residents from the rest; not a vestige of the stone-desert which they made of the place where people lived, fought and died- people who had been there for a thousand years. Not a single burnt -down house from whose windows mothers had thrown their children and jumped after them.
Sometimes I walk through that new modern neighborhood, along pavements which cover the bones of those who were burnt there. I look up at the sky where my house and all the other houses once stood.
When I close my eyes the streets become familiar again. A crowd of people wander among the shadows of houses and, clearly, as if they were real, I hear the voices of children, crying in that other language, " Hob rachmunes!" Have mercy!
Sometimes I come to Sienna or Sliska Street. I look at the hospital gate, peer through the railings and see that the Paradise apple trees that used to blossom there have gone. the hospital does not bear the name that it should.
But I close my eyes. And the gate opens-the one on Sliska Street where once the homeless child had stripped naked-and all the people who disappeared pass through it.
There is the Head Doctor, in her white gown doing her last rounds,and behind her the doctors, nurses and orderlies, then the administrators and Dr. Kroszczor, who carefully closes the gate behind him.
I know that they've left everything as it should be and that Dola Keilson has swept all the floors.
My favorite passages:
" Years have passed since then. Many years. There's no trace in this great modern city of what happened here. Yes, there is a monument.
But not even a single fragment remains of the wall which separated one third of the residents from the rest; not a vestige of the stone-desert which they made of the place where people lived, fought and died- people who had been there for a thousand years. Not a single burnt -down house from whose windows mothers had thrown their children and jumped after them.
Sometimes I walk through that new modern neighborhood, along pavements which cover the bones of those who were burnt there. I look up at the sky where my house and all the other houses once stood.
When I close my eyes the streets become familiar again. A crowd of people wander among the shadows of houses and, clearly, as if they were real, I hear the voices of children, crying in that other language, " Hob rachmunes!" Have mercy!
Sometimes I come to Sienna or Sliska Street. I look at the hospital gate, peer through the railings and see that the Paradise apple trees that used to blossom there have gone. the hospital does not bear the name that it should.
But I close my eyes. And the gate opens-the one on Sliska Street where once the homeless child had stripped naked-and all the people who disappeared pass through it.
There is the Head Doctor, in her white gown doing her last rounds,and behind her the doctors, nurses and orderlies, then the administrators and Dr. Kroszczor, who carefully closes the gate behind him.
I know that they've left everything as it should be and that Dola Keilson has swept all the floors.
January 12, 2009
I think I've made the mistake of judging all books of this type against "The Diary of Anne Frank" as well as the writers.
I didn't care for this book or writings as well as others that I have read like it.
I completely respect and honor the writer and what she went through, but this just didn't seem to capture me the way these stories often do.
I'm sure the experience of what this person went through was far more intense than how she wrote about it.
I didn't care for this book or writings as well as others that I have read like it.
I completely respect and honor the writer and what she went through, but this just didn't seem to capture me the way these stories often do.
I'm sure the experience of what this person went through was far more intense than how she wrote about it.
March 1, 2013
Difficult to follow the writing, but a remarkable book about the terrors we should never forget
September 12, 2018
As the author herself also admits these memoirs are fragmented and incomplete. However this does not diminish from this work since I believe that this was partly because they were written after a long time and also since they evoke memories which the author does not wish to remember . Suffice to say that in the book the author mentions that apart from assisting in various abortions which she was in principle against since she was after saving life not killing babies she also had to have an abortion herself which left a terrible effect on her .“… Did I have to explain to him that we lived in times in which children didn’t have the right to be born because they should be born to life and not for death… pg 148
On the bunks lay skeletons of children only their eyes were alive …. Until you ve seen such children you do not know what life can be like ,pg 42
The darkest spot is under the lamplight "pg 175
“Hotel Poland “
Pawiak and Gesia prisons
Wola and Plocka Street massacres
Hanna Maysia Hirszfeld
Ascent to Heaven HS Stevens
Campo dei Fiori Czeslan Milosz on the burning of Giordano Bruno whilst all around drinking and going on with their life
Counter attack by Szlenzel poem on the Warsaw uprising
On the bunks lay skeletons of children only their eyes were alive …. Until you ve seen such children you do not know what life can be like ,pg 42
The darkest spot is under the lamplight "pg 175
“Hotel Poland “
Pawiak and Gesia prisons
Wola and Plocka Street massacres
Hanna Maysia Hirszfeld
Ascent to Heaven HS Stevens
Campo dei Fiori Czeslan Milosz on the burning of Giordano Bruno whilst all around drinking and going on with their life
Counter attack by Szlenzel poem on the Warsaw uprising
September 23, 2018
A powerful and important book. Why has this been allowed to fade into obscurity? I Remember Nothing More is a brutal and unflinchingly real portrayal of one Jewish doctor's experiences in the holocaust. Blady-Szwagjer asserts many times that she isn't a writer. If not, she certainly should have been. This woman witnessed atrocities every day. Deportations. Black market abortions. Children and infants dying of starvation. And yet Blady-Szwagjer describes everything in the most detached, matter-of-fact way. But the things she saw and did are sometimes beyond description.
Only rated 4 stars because all the jumping around in time made it hard to know what was going on. I also had difficulty keeping track of who everyone was. But there's an appendix at the back that helped with this. It can be slow in places, and the detached tone might turn off some people, but I Remember Nothing More is a book I can't recommend enough. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the holocaust, especially the medical side of it.
Only rated 4 stars because all the jumping around in time made it hard to know what was going on. I also had difficulty keeping track of who everyone was. But there's an appendix at the back that helped with this. It can be slow in places, and the detached tone might turn off some people, but I Remember Nothing More is a book I can't recommend enough. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the holocaust, especially the medical side of it.
June 26, 2018
It's striking how reluctant Adina Szwajger is to tell her incredible story. She informs us early on that she was pressured to write down her memories of the Warsaw ghetto late in her life and there are times when it becomes apparent her heart is only half in it. I thought this reluctance provided a constant insight into just how difficult it is for survivors of the Holocaust to speak of their experience. The impossibility of explaining how it came about that I survived when virtually everyone else I ever knew didn't. It must be profoundly discomforting to know one has been singled out for immunity to the Nazi killing machine.Obviously,luck plays a big part but I think mental resilience was also an enormous factor and this Adina clearly possessed.
April 9, 2018
A wonderfully written memoir of survival and humanity in wartime Warsaw. The author's honesty and sorrow come through so well. I really like her voice, which is so conscious of bearing witness and yet also of helping readers understand. In order to survive, she had to hide her fear, to smile and even laugh during times of great tragedy and danger. Offering medical and crucial courier assistance whenever she could, she endured. I'm grateful that late in life she was finally able to write about what she did and what she saw during those extraordinary times.
Want to read
July 12, 2010The author of this book inspired the fictional character in the book "The Cats in Krasinski Square" which I read recently.
January 30, 2013
OMG. Anyone who debunks the Holocaust should be FORCED to read this book - I will say no more.
January 22, 2014
Excellent. Fascinating memoir.
April 9, 2022
"I Remember Nothing More--The Warsaw Children's Hospital and the Jewish Resistance" by Adina Blady Szwajger (1988, 178 pages). The author, a young pediatrician during the time of the Warsaw Ghetto, recalls her tortured past and experiences.
This reader found most moving the chapter titled "The Inhuman End of Superhuman Medicine" where Szwajger recalls working at the "hospital" adjacent to Umschlagplatz. Here, during the horrible deportations to Treblinka, a daughter asks Dr. Szwajger to "help" her failing mother by administering morphine to the woman; to end her life and spare her the horror of the cattle cars. Szwajger obliges and then more people as for the same "help". Szwajger obliges yet again, now asking "How much morphine do you have?" The doctor then goes to the neonatal unit where she meets Dr Margolis (I believe head of the hospital), tells Margolis her plan and the two administer by spoon, morphine to the infants.
"Only Doctor Margolis was with me. And downstairs, there was screaming because the Szaulis and Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks. After that we went in to the older children and told them that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear. They believed us and drank the required amount...and they went to sleep".
This scene, documented at least in part by the author Adolph Rudnicki (Aron Hirschhorn) in "Ascent to Heaven" tortured Szwajger the remainder of her life. In the last pages of her book she leaves us with this;
"For forty years after the war I was a doctor. I believe...that one is a doctor in order to save life, anywhere and at any time. For forty years I have never departed from this view. But somewhere underneath I thought that I had no right to carry out my profession. After all, one does not start one's work as a doctor by leading people not to life but to death. And I have lived with this knowledge to this day. And it does not help me that I know it was all in order to save people's lives, that it was all necessary. But along the way something was not as it should have been. Maybe it was too heavy a burden for the rest of my life?"
The author worked as a courier for the ZOB; lived on the Aryan side after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto; was involved in the Warsaw Uprising helping hide Jews (including Zuckerman and Marek Edelman) until liberation. After the war Szwajger married and remained in Poland.
This reader found most moving the chapter titled "The Inhuman End of Superhuman Medicine" where Szwajger recalls working at the "hospital" adjacent to Umschlagplatz. Here, during the horrible deportations to Treblinka, a daughter asks Dr. Szwajger to "help" her failing mother by administering morphine to the woman; to end her life and spare her the horror of the cattle cars. Szwajger obliges and then more people as for the same "help". Szwajger obliges yet again, now asking "How much morphine do you have?" The doctor then goes to the neonatal unit where she meets Dr Margolis (I believe head of the hospital), tells Margolis her plan and the two administer by spoon, morphine to the infants.
"Only Doctor Margolis was with me. And downstairs, there was screaming because the Szaulis and Germans were already there, taking the sick from the wards to the cattle trucks. After that we went in to the older children and told them that this medicine was going to make their pain disappear. They believed us and drank the required amount...and they went to sleep".
This scene, documented at least in part by the author Adolph Rudnicki (Aron Hirschhorn) in "Ascent to Heaven" tortured Szwajger the remainder of her life. In the last pages of her book she leaves us with this;
"For forty years after the war I was a doctor. I believe...that one is a doctor in order to save life, anywhere and at any time. For forty years I have never departed from this view. But somewhere underneath I thought that I had no right to carry out my profession. After all, one does not start one's work as a doctor by leading people not to life but to death. And I have lived with this knowledge to this day. And it does not help me that I know it was all in order to save people's lives, that it was all necessary. But along the way something was not as it should have been. Maybe it was too heavy a burden for the rest of my life?"
The author worked as a courier for the ZOB; lived on the Aryan side after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto; was involved in the Warsaw Uprising helping hide Jews (including Zuckerman and Marek Edelman) until liberation. After the war Szwajger married and remained in Poland.
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March 26, 2023„Bo to wszystko to tylko słowa. A ja nie jestem literatem i nie umiem znaleźć słów, które krzyczą.
Zresztą to nie jest literatura. To jest relacja o tym, co było naprawdę.”
Zacznę tak: uważam, że tego typu memoir nie powinny podlegać ocenie. Ze względu na wartość osobistą autora, ale przede wszystkim na wartość historyczną.
Nie do końca wiem jak odpowiednie ubrać w słowa to co czuję po tej lekturze, więc napisze tutaj bardzo krótko.
Ból, cierpienie, brutalna szczerość i przejmujące całe ciało dreszcze, wiele refleksji i bezsenność.
Pomimo tego, iż na co dzień zajmuję się edukacją dzieci i młodzieży jeśli chodzi o powstanie w getcie warszawskim i historii żydów polskich, to historia Pani Adiny głęboko mną wstrząsnęła.
„Lata minęły. Wiele lat. W tym wielkim nowoczesnym mieście nie ma śladu po tym, co się tutaj stało. Tak, stoi pomnik. Ale nie ma ani kawałka muru, który oddzielał 1/3 mieszkańców miasta od reszty. Nie pozostawiono żadnej enklawy kamiennej pustyni, w którą obrócono miejsce, gdzie żyli, umierali i walczyli, ci którzy byli tu od 1000 lat.
Nie ma ani jednego wypalonego domu, z którego okien matki wyrzucały dzieci, a potem skakały same za nimi. Więc chodzę czasem tą nową, nowoczesną dzielnicą po bruku , który kryje kości spalonych, patrzę na to miejsce na niebie, gdzie stał mój dom i wszystkie inne domy.
Kiedy zamykam oczy, ulice stają się znów bliskie. Tłum ludzi - cieni - krąży między cieniami domów i wyraźnie, tak jakby to było naprawdę, słyszę głos dzieci wołających w tamtym języku:
- Hob rachmunes - miejcie litość. ”
Zresztą to nie jest literatura. To jest relacja o tym, co było naprawdę.”
Zacznę tak: uważam, że tego typu memoir nie powinny podlegać ocenie. Ze względu na wartość osobistą autora, ale przede wszystkim na wartość historyczną.
Nie do końca wiem jak odpowiednie ubrać w słowa to co czuję po tej lekturze, więc napisze tutaj bardzo krótko.
Ból, cierpienie, brutalna szczerość i przejmujące całe ciało dreszcze, wiele refleksji i bezsenność.
Pomimo tego, iż na co dzień zajmuję się edukacją dzieci i młodzieży jeśli chodzi o powstanie w getcie warszawskim i historii żydów polskich, to historia Pani Adiny głęboko mną wstrząsnęła.
„Lata minęły. Wiele lat. W tym wielkim nowoczesnym mieście nie ma śladu po tym, co się tutaj stało. Tak, stoi pomnik. Ale nie ma ani kawałka muru, który oddzielał 1/3 mieszkańców miasta od reszty. Nie pozostawiono żadnej enklawy kamiennej pustyni, w którą obrócono miejsce, gdzie żyli, umierali i walczyli, ci którzy byli tu od 1000 lat.
Nie ma ani jednego wypalonego domu, z którego okien matki wyrzucały dzieci, a potem skakały same za nimi. Więc chodzę czasem tą nową, nowoczesną dzielnicą po bruku , który kryje kości spalonych, patrzę na to miejsce na niebie, gdzie stał mój dom i wszystkie inne domy.
Kiedy zamykam oczy, ulice stają się znów bliskie. Tłum ludzi - cieni - krąży między cieniami domów i wyraźnie, tak jakby to było naprawdę, słyszę głos dzieci wołających w tamtym języku:
- Hob rachmunes - miejcie litość. ”
July 1, 2023
Bardzo mocne wspomnienia, jedne z najmocniejszych, jakie przeczytałem. Nic dziwnego, że autorce zajęło tak wiele lat podjęcie decyzji, żeby je w ogóle napisać...
W ogóle nie umiałbym ocenić na niżej niż maksimum, chociaż książka napisana jest niewprawnie, czasem brakuje chronologii, często się powtarza, że "więcej nic nie pamięta"... natomiast w ogóle mi to nie przeszkadzało, bo od tej historii nie sposób się oderwać, choć jest tak tragiczna. Mam trochę opór napisać, że "lubię" takie książki, bo oczywiście lepiej by było gdyby nigdy nie musiały powstać... ale skoro to już się stało, to dobrze, że autorka jednak zdecydowała się opisać swoją historię. A dla mnie to jest po prostu książka, która zostaje gdzieś w człowieku, bez oceniania, zostaje groza tego co autorka musiała przeżyć i co musiała zrobić ale właśnie dlatego wolę czytać takie książki zamiast jakichś kiepskich powieści na przykład.
(czytana/słuchana: 28-29.06.2023)
5/5 [10/10]
"To, co się stało, nie jest ani do pisania, ani do czytania, przynajmniej tak mi się zdawało."
W ogóle nie umiałbym ocenić na niżej niż maksimum, chociaż książka napisana jest niewprawnie, czasem brakuje chronologii, często się powtarza, że "więcej nic nie pamięta"... natomiast w ogóle mi to nie przeszkadzało, bo od tej historii nie sposób się oderwać, choć jest tak tragiczna. Mam trochę opór napisać, że "lubię" takie książki, bo oczywiście lepiej by było gdyby nigdy nie musiały powstać... ale skoro to już się stało, to dobrze, że autorka jednak zdecydowała się opisać swoją historię. A dla mnie to jest po prostu książka, która zostaje gdzieś w człowieku, bez oceniania, zostaje groza tego co autorka musiała przeżyć i co musiała zrobić ale właśnie dlatego wolę czytać takie książki zamiast jakichś kiepskich powieści na przykład.
"Bo to wszystko są tylko słowa. A ja nie jestem literatem i nie umiem znaleźć słów, które krzyczą.
Z resztą to nie jest literatura. To jest relacja o tym, co było naprawdę."
(czytana/słuchana: 28-29.06.2023)
5/5 [10/10]
December 17, 2023
Outstanding!!! A must read for all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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