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Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście
The establishment and liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto has become an icon of the Holocaust experience. Remarkably, a full history of the Ghetto has never been written, despite the publication over some sixty years of numerous memoirs, studies, biographical accounts, and primary documents. The Warsaw A Guide to the Perished City is this history, researched and written with painstaking care and devotion over many years and now published for the first time in English.
The authors explore the history of the ghetto’s evolution, the actual daily experience of its thousands of inhabitants from its creation in 1940 to its liquidation following the uprising of 1943. Encyclopedic in scope, the book encompasses a range of topics from food supplies to education, religious activities to the Jundenrat’s administration. Separate chapters deal with the mass deportations to Treblinka and the famous uprising. A series of original maps, along with biographies, a glossary, and a bibliography, completes this masterful work.
The authors explore the history of the ghetto’s evolution, the actual daily experience of its thousands of inhabitants from its creation in 1940 to its liquidation following the uprising of 1943. Encyclopedic in scope, the book encompasses a range of topics from food supplies to education, religious activities to the Jundenrat’s administration. Separate chapters deal with the mass deportations to Treblinka and the famous uprising. A series of original maps, along with biographies, a glossary, and a bibliography, completes this masterful work.
824 pages, Unknown Binding
First published August 25, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 28, 2018
Probably this is a book more for scholars and students than the common reader but what a goldmine of information it is. We tend to have a very simplified brutal image of what life was like in the Warsaw Ghetto. This book presents a much richer perspective. One thing that comes across here is how enterprising the Polish Jews were. Given that they were officially denied all raw materials they still managed to create countless workshops where everything from toys to honey to machinery were produced. They also created a thriving cultural life, organised many soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless. This book documents many of these initiatives.
Another thing very apparent is the slow-burning sadistic cynical cruelty of the Nazis, like a cat toying with a wounded bird. One moment they're relaxing restrictions; the next they introduce a still harsher decree. It wasn't enough for them to kill Jews they also had to first humiliate and divide them. It's sad to realise how much infighting there was among the various factions of the Jewish population and how much anger was misdirected away from the Germans as a result. Particularly guilty are some rather self-righteous puritanical men including the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum with his way off-point tirade against Jewish women who wore hats and lipstick in the ghetto. It's odd that when you've got such a clearcut enemy in your midst you should start attacking sideshows.
The maps that come with this book are amazing. On one are shown all the bunkers the Jews built before the final deportations - a veritable underground city of connecting refuges often equipped with electricity, water, air ventilation and even a telephone.
It'll always be a mystery why there was never any kind of riot at the yard where the Warsaw Jews were forced onto the cattle trains. But this book shows how tirelessly and heroically many fought to retain their human dignity through a commitment to social welfare, cultural initiatives and religious rallying. It also brings vividly back to life a part of Warsaw that was literally razed to the ground and no longer exists.
Another thing very apparent is the slow-burning sadistic cynical cruelty of the Nazis, like a cat toying with a wounded bird. One moment they're relaxing restrictions; the next they introduce a still harsher decree. It wasn't enough for them to kill Jews they also had to first humiliate and divide them. It's sad to realise how much infighting there was among the various factions of the Jewish population and how much anger was misdirected away from the Germans as a result. Particularly guilty are some rather self-righteous puritanical men including the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum with his way off-point tirade against Jewish women who wore hats and lipstick in the ghetto. It's odd that when you've got such a clearcut enemy in your midst you should start attacking sideshows.
The maps that come with this book are amazing. On one are shown all the bunkers the Jews built before the final deportations - a veritable underground city of connecting refuges often equipped with electricity, water, air ventilation and even a telephone.
It'll always be a mystery why there was never any kind of riot at the yard where the Warsaw Jews were forced onto the cattle trains. But this book shows how tirelessly and heroically many fought to retain their human dignity through a commitment to social welfare, cultural initiatives and religious rallying. It also brings vividly back to life a part of Warsaw that was literally razed to the ground and no longer exists.
June 3, 2011
This would definitely be the definitive text on the Warsaw Ghetto. I doubt there's more than a few shreds of information about the ghetto that aren't in the book. It utilizes every conceivable source, including lots of oral testimonies to memoirs and diaries, etc. Much of the material used to put this book together is unpublished archival stuff that's never seen the light of day before. Photos are sprinkled throughout.
The book is divided not so much chronologically as categorically, with sections like "Commercial Activity in the Ghetto" and "Cultural Life in the Ghetto." Each of these chapters comes with its own appendix and often one or more lists (like, say, a list of businesses and their addresses). Towards the end, it covers the Great Deportation of mid-1942 day by day, then covers the spring 1943 Ghetto Uprising likewise. There's also a list of prominent characters from the ghetto in the back of the book, with short paragraphs explaining who they were, what their backgrounds were, what they did and what their fate was -- if known. But make no mistake: this isn't just an encyclopedia. It's far more detailed than that.
Because this is the definitive text, I would not recommend it to beginners who don't know much about the Warsaw Ghetto. There's so much information, they'd drown in it. There are plenty of other, smaller, books to provide an introduction to the Ghetto. But for serious Holocaust researchers who have read extensively already, this is definitely worth plowing through even if it does take weeks.
The book is divided not so much chronologically as categorically, with sections like "Commercial Activity in the Ghetto" and "Cultural Life in the Ghetto." Each of these chapters comes with its own appendix and often one or more lists (like, say, a list of businesses and their addresses). Towards the end, it covers the Great Deportation of mid-1942 day by day, then covers the spring 1943 Ghetto Uprising likewise. There's also a list of prominent characters from the ghetto in the back of the book, with short paragraphs explaining who they were, what their backgrounds were, what they did and what their fate was -- if known. But make no mistake: this isn't just an encyclopedia. It's far more detailed than that.
Because this is the definitive text, I would not recommend it to beginners who don't know much about the Warsaw Ghetto. There's so much information, they'd drown in it. There are plenty of other, smaller, books to provide an introduction to the Ghetto. But for serious Holocaust researchers who have read extensively already, this is definitely worth plowing through even if it does take weeks.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews