Unique collection of accounts, diaries, memoirs, letters, reports, leaflets, press and literary works created in the Warsaw Ghetto. The material comes from an archive that Jews gathered during the war to document the life of Jewish community inside the Ghetto.
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The story of seven Jews and a catholic priest who spent almost 5 months hidden in the basement in the ruins of Warsaw – city completely destroyed after Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Those “Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw” survived times of the terrific threat: human voices heard from the sewage system, first snow that shut off the ways to reach the food. They had to fight their own nature in extreme conditions and ceaseless danger. Due to their determination and sensitivity they managed to survive. After the liberation of Warsaw on January 17th 1945 they came out from their hideaway.
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The story of a Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust. The book shows that for Jews there was no effective system of coping with the Nazi oppression. Neither connections nor money could save them – the survivors had to be extremely lucky in the first place and have a tremendous will of survival. The testimony is supplemented with the description of an amazing process: Auschwitz could have become a point of mass emigration of the Jews and not a site of extermination. The present fourth edition of the book contains documents fully confirming the truthfulness of that thesis. These memoirs are expanded with the post-war history of the Schönker family, including their struggle with the secret political police persecuting Jewish entrepreneurs (1945–1955).
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A diary showing extreme experience of being one of 10 people hiding in a 6 square meter cellar. It is a testimony of survival in Kolomyia (today’s Ukraine) where after the liquidation of local ghetto, between winter 1942/43 and spring 1944 author, his wife and group of other Jews managed to escape the chase of Nazi functionaries. Apart from daily problems and complex relationships between the group of people shut and herded in the shelter, the diary refers to relations between Jews and Poles providing them their help.
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The history of uprising in Nazi extermination camp in Sobibór told by the eye-witnesses who survived and escaped death. 27 testimonies of camp’s prisoners (including two of them who died in the gas chamber) represent over 300.000 of those who perished in Sobibor.
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The original version of the testimony of Calel Perechodnik, a resident of Otwock, a Jewish policeman at the local ghetto. The book is an accusation of the German people, and, at the same time, the Polish and Jewish people. The author assumes a great portion of responsibility for the death of his wife and a two-year old daughter. He outlines the figures of Poles and Jews known to him. He ruthlessly reveals their weaknesses and vices which had led to social consent for the occurrence of such inhumane situations. The Confession was written in 1943, but its author did not live to see the liberation.
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Deeply touching and thrilling account of a Czech Jew. Glazar was one of only a few survivors of the Nazi death camp – Treblinka. He was transported to Treblinka in October 1942 and was one of the workers who sorted the belongings of those sent to the gas chambers. He survived several months working in the camp, knowing that he was working for a cause that killed thousands of Jews. On August 2, 1943, the prisoners of Treblinka broke out through a damaged gate during a revolt. While most of the escapees were arrested in proximity to the camp, Glazar escaped the area and made his way across Poland.
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A thrilling testimony of a Jewish doctor, direct witness of the Holocaust, who lost almost all his loved ones and spent 9 months hidden in an attic of the house inhabited by a Polish family. His testimony was written while hiding in Tłuste (today’s Ukraine) in 1943–44. Significant part of the memoirs is devoted to his prewar life and the situation of young Polish Jews in the 1930s. The part of the book related to the war time reflects the cruelty of aggressors and complicated relations between Jewish, Polish and Ukrainian people in the small cities of Podole region.
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An account made by 18 years old girl. Her Jewish origin was a death sentence but she managed to escape form ghetto in Końskie and survived the Holocaust “on the aryan papers” thanks to help she got from Poles. Her testimony is a vivid image of the everyday life under the Nazis and a frank, truthful study of the Polish-Jewish relations.
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