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A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto
On 16 November 1940, the Nazis sealed off a large section of central Warsaw, where they compelled all the Jews of the Polish capital to live. Over 400,000 people were cut off from the outside world in the ghetto, among them a 47-year-old school teacher who kept a record of the terrible events and conditions.
Part of Abraham Lewin's diary, covering the period from April 1942 to January 1943, was found hidden in a milk churn after the war and is now published in English for the first time. This document, fit to rank with the accounts of Anne Frank and of Emanuel Ringelblum, is especially illuminating on how far the Jews were aware of their possible fate and on how they reacted to the threat of deportation to the death camps.
Antony Polonsky's introduction and notes place the events in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of Polish Jewry as a whole, and demonstrate how Lewin's diary is an important contribution to the knowledge of the Holocaust.
Part of Abraham Lewin's diary, covering the period from April 1942 to January 1943, was found hidden in a milk churn after the war and is now published in English for the first time. This document, fit to rank with the accounts of Anne Frank and of Emanuel Ringelblum, is especially illuminating on how far the Jews were aware of their possible fate and on how they reacted to the threat of deportation to the death camps.
Antony Polonsky's introduction and notes place the events in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of Polish Jewry as a whole, and demonstrate how Lewin's diary is an important contribution to the knowledge of the Holocaust.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 8, 2016
I just reread the diary for the second time. This is one of my favorite contemporary accounts of life in Warsaw ghetto around the period of GrossAktion. Many subsequent books on Holocaust refer to Lewin's work. Lewin, of course, was a member of Oneg Shabbat, the underground archive group directed by Emanuel Ringelblum. Unfortunately, the first fifteen months of Lewin's diary did not survive. The author himself perished in the second Aktion of January 18th, 1943.
A Cup of Tears has a great balance of personal tragedy (Lewin's beloved wife Luba was sent to Treblinka in August 1943) and broad picture of the catastrophe, author's rumination about the zeitgeist and anecdotes of daily life. I would recommend the diary to anyone interested in a first-hand account of Holocaust.
A Cup of Tears has a great balance of personal tragedy (Lewin's beloved wife Luba was sent to Treblinka in August 1943) and broad picture of the catastrophe, author's rumination about the zeitgeist and anecdotes of daily life. I would recommend the diary to anyone interested in a first-hand account of Holocaust.
April 20, 2018
I don't want to generalise but in my experience women often evoke a more vivid and thus more moving picture of a period of history in journals than men because of the importance they grant to visual impressions and memory. Men, when they pick up a pen on the other hand, tend to quickly veer off into the philosophical and the abstract as if writing a text book. They want to establish some kind of objective overview of their situation. You might say men go for the objective while women are more inclined to stay closer to the subjective. Men tend to tell; women to show. And as all of us know who love novels showing is much more engaging than telling. I understand why the author of this journal was continually trying to report all the atrocities he heard about, why he sought to provide the bigger picture but it's often all so impersonal that it lacks roots, ground underfoot. For example, the author has a wife and child. However, we learn nothing about them. In the journals of women they almost always give us vivid pictures of poignant family moments and this is like that close up of a suffering child in a news report. Our feelings of empathy are fully engaged. Perhaps the most poignant moment is when the author's wife doesn't return home one day. He knows she has been caught up in a roundup and remembers she left the house in a "summer dress, carrying his leather briefcase." Suddenly he gives us a detail that makes the tragedy so much more moving. We imagine his wife in her summer dress, carrying his briefcase being herded into the cattle train headed for the gas chambers at Treblinka. So often it's these small details that bring a story to life. Unfortunately, there is no such vivid image of his daughter in the entire journal. She's just an anonymous name and I found this deeply sad.
Don't get me wrong, this is incredibly moving at times, especially as the noose begins tightening. But I would have to say the journals of Mary Berg and Janina Bauman gave me a more vivid and detailed idea of what the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto went through. Because they limited themselves to what they experienced first-hand. I also feel certain we'd have a much richer and more detailed notion of every historical period had women been encouraged to write.
Don't get me wrong, this is incredibly moving at times, especially as the noose begins tightening. But I would have to say the journals of Mary Berg and Janina Bauman gave me a more vivid and detailed idea of what the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto went through. Because they limited themselves to what they experienced first-hand. I also feel certain we'd have a much richer and more detailed notion of every historical period had women been encouraged to write.
May 28, 2018
In November 1940, the Nazis sealed off the Warsaw Ghetto. Among the 400 000 Jews were incarcerated in the hell of the Warsaw Ghetto was 47 year old schoolteacher Abraham Lewin, whose diary chronicles the suffering, sickness, starvation, brutality and death in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the genocide of nearly all of it's 400 000 people by the Nazis.
Particularly heartrending is the fate of children under the Nazi terror. Many murders of children and young people are recounted here, as well as the strvation of Jewish children in the ghetto , their bodies swollen with starvation, crying for food. We read of such heartbreaking incidents such as the arrest of a prettily dressed ten year old girl as she cried "Mr Policeman".
The author's own young daughter, who was taken to her death by the Nazis , was a member of the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair, which was to play a large role in the resistance against Nazi rule during the Warsaw Ghetto uprisings.
Hitler's threats to annihilate the Jews are mirrored by those of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas Hezbollah and BDS. What begins with the Jews does not however end with the Jews- that the Nazis would go on to murder Gypsies, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Russians and many others.
Particularly heartrending is the fate of children under the Nazi terror. Many murders of children and young people are recounted here, as well as the strvation of Jewish children in the ghetto , their bodies swollen with starvation, crying for food. We read of such heartbreaking incidents such as the arrest of a prettily dressed ten year old girl as she cried "Mr Policeman".
The author's own young daughter, who was taken to her death by the Nazis , was a member of the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair, which was to play a large role in the resistance against Nazi rule during the Warsaw Ghetto uprisings.
Hitler's threats to annihilate the Jews are mirrored by those of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas Hezbollah and BDS. What begins with the Jews does not however end with the Jews- that the Nazis would go on to murder Gypsies, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Russians and many others.
May 18, 2018
What do you say, what do you think? When a diary ends abruptly...I mean, we already knew this was not going to end well for our diarist...but...that empty half of page after that last entry just...hurts.
Obviously, Abraham knew he was writing for history. And the effort it must have taken to make something as relativly simple as a diary entry. But I cant imagine that he carried the diary with him - if he was stopped and searched, it could be the death of him. But keeping it in a hiding place and traveling to and from - again, a walk across a street could mean death.
For people who say there was no Holocaust, who say that the Germans were not looking to exterminate the Jewish race: read this and tell me it is fake. Read his terror, his grief, his incomprehension.
Obviously, Abraham knew he was writing for history. And the effort it must have taken to make something as relativly simple as a diary entry. But I cant imagine that he carried the diary with him - if he was stopped and searched, it could be the death of him. But keeping it in a hiding place and traveling to and from - again, a walk across a street could mean death.
For people who say there was no Holocaust, who say that the Germans were not looking to exterminate the Jewish race: read this and tell me it is fake. Read his terror, his grief, his incomprehension.
January 20, 2020
"A Cup Of Tears" by Abraham Lewin (1989, 320 pages). A Warsaw Ghetto diary recommended read.
Lewin writes a searing account of the savagery Ghetto victims were forced to endure. Emotional, in the moment, articulate, he writes a masterpiece of despair, documenting crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi murder machine; heartbreaking...
Lewin writes a searing account of the savagery Ghetto victims were forced to endure. Emotional, in the moment, articulate, he writes a masterpiece of despair, documenting crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi murder machine; heartbreaking...
July 3, 2024
Such a tragic and important historical document. Abraham Lewin wrote in such a moving way about life in the ghetto. Heartbreaking but so valuable. The introduction was a masterpiece as well. Everybody should read this book.
November 11, 2013
Testament to “a Swollen Sea of Misfortune and Jewish Blood”
Holocaust diaries are, without exception, very difficult reading. Among these painful eyewitness accounts, one of the most searing than that of Abraham Lewin, a former school teacher. Both in his academic background and quality of writing, Lewin bears comparison with fellow Warsaw Ghetto diarist Chaim Kaplan, a one-time principal of a Hebrew school in Warsaw until his academy was shut down and banned by the Nazis and Kaplan banished to that city's notorious Ghetto. Both men took it upon themselves to record everything they saw, heard, and knew, that is, to bear witness. Unlike Kaplan, however, Lewin rarely mentioned his reasons for writing. The most likely reason was Kaplan kept a diary, while Lewin was a journalist for Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Oyneg Shabbes underground activity. “In these tragic times, whenever several Jews gather together and each recounts just a part of what he has heard and seen, it becomes a part of what he has heard or seen, it becomes a mountain or a swollen sea of misfortune and Jewish blood. Jewish blood, pure and simple. We gather every Sabbath, a group of activists in the Jewish community, to discuss our diaries and writings. We want our sufferings, these ‘birth pangs of the Messiah,’ to be impressed upon the memories of future generations and on the memory of the whole world,” recounted Lewin on June 6, 1940.
The first part of Abraham Lewin’s work was in Yiddish. The second part is a stark recounting of the Great Deportation of 1942; for this section, he used the more formal Hebrew. In great detail, Lewin chronicled the shrinking of the Ghetto, both in physical size and population, the latter due both to the relentless transports to Treblinka and from starvation, disease, and Nazi cruelty within the Ghetto walls, which were ever-tightening, like a noose around the survivors. His writings take on a tone of extreme bitterness after losing his beloved wife and daughter. Abraham Lewin managed to survive longer than most others, but his writings end abruptly on Saturday, January 16, 1943. Accompanied by a eulogy given on September 13, 1941 (itself a short document of exceptional poignancy), Lewin’s writings emerged from one of the two milk cans of the Ringelblum archive, offering readers an exceptionally important and well-detailed (and beautifully written) eyewitness account of those terrible and terrifying years of the horror that was the Warsaw Ghetto.
Holocaust diaries are, without exception, very difficult reading. Among these painful eyewitness accounts, one of the most searing than that of Abraham Lewin, a former school teacher. Both in his academic background and quality of writing, Lewin bears comparison with fellow Warsaw Ghetto diarist Chaim Kaplan, a one-time principal of a Hebrew school in Warsaw until his academy was shut down and banned by the Nazis and Kaplan banished to that city's notorious Ghetto. Both men took it upon themselves to record everything they saw, heard, and knew, that is, to bear witness. Unlike Kaplan, however, Lewin rarely mentioned his reasons for writing. The most likely reason was Kaplan kept a diary, while Lewin was a journalist for Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Oyneg Shabbes underground activity. “In these tragic times, whenever several Jews gather together and each recounts just a part of what he has heard and seen, it becomes a part of what he has heard or seen, it becomes a mountain or a swollen sea of misfortune and Jewish blood. Jewish blood, pure and simple. We gather every Sabbath, a group of activists in the Jewish community, to discuss our diaries and writings. We want our sufferings, these ‘birth pangs of the Messiah,’ to be impressed upon the memories of future generations and on the memory of the whole world,” recounted Lewin on June 6, 1940.
The first part of Abraham Lewin’s work was in Yiddish. The second part is a stark recounting of the Great Deportation of 1942; for this section, he used the more formal Hebrew. In great detail, Lewin chronicled the shrinking of the Ghetto, both in physical size and population, the latter due both to the relentless transports to Treblinka and from starvation, disease, and Nazi cruelty within the Ghetto walls, which were ever-tightening, like a noose around the survivors. His writings take on a tone of extreme bitterness after losing his beloved wife and daughter. Abraham Lewin managed to survive longer than most others, but his writings end abruptly on Saturday, January 16, 1943. Accompanied by a eulogy given on September 13, 1941 (itself a short document of exceptional poignancy), Lewin’s writings emerged from one of the two milk cans of the Ringelblum archive, offering readers an exceptionally important and well-detailed (and beautifully written) eyewitness account of those terrible and terrifying years of the horror that was the Warsaw Ghetto.
June 18, 2009
Diary, actually.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews