Customer Reviews

Against All Odds: A Tale of Two Survivors

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This well-written, easy-to-read memoir tells the tale of two young Polish Jews, Norman Salsitz and Amalie Petranker, who managed to survive WWII under the murderous rule of the Gestapo before meeting in Cracow (during the Russian advance) and falling in love. Their separate tales of how they avoided the daily threat of death are spellbinding. I have read many fascinating concentration camp and gulag survival stories, but this one differs because it deals with how Norman and Amalie managed to avoid being sent to camps and doom like their families and fellow Jews. Amalie survived because of Aryan looks and Polish fluency that allowed her to pass as a Pole. Her story is electric because she was always on the edge of being discovered or betrayed. Norman's survival was due to his quick intellect and guile that allowed him to make himself useful (including supplying coffee) to a brutal Gestapo commander. At the very last moment he escaped execution (as the Russians were approaching) by fleeing to the rural woods with a few fellow escapees and surviving as a partisan fighter. His story is one of surviving both the Gestapo and treacherous anti-semetic Poles. One of the reviewers of this book is a Pole who takes umbrage of and discredits Norman's claim of widespread Polish anti-semetism and treachery. I am a Polish-American and come down in the middle because I know from personal experience that Poles of that era were generally anti-semetic (as were most people, including many Americans evidenced by Father Coughlin, Charles Lindberg and Henry Ford). Norman acknowledges that he received a lot of Polish help in surviving but, unfortunately, he ends up coming across as bitter and anti-Polish. This diminishes his credibility somewhat (the Nazis killed as many Poles [3.5 million] as they did Polish Jews), but I find his story otherwise inspiring and believable. Highly recommended with the latter caveat.

The book is quite moving. It is written from a different perspective. Amalie masqueraded as a Christian Pole. Norman fought in the partisan movement (the underground). Their first meeting was most unusual. Norman had come to kill her (he thought she was the enemy); instead he ended up marrying her. A very fresh look at a dark side of this century.

The author, a Polish Jew, describes the Jews of Kolbuszowa, the destruction of the ghetto in Stanislawow, his peregrinations, etc. He confirms the fact that the Germans deliberately spared the Karaites, a Jewish sect (p. 152). In his experience, the so-called Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) consisted largely of young Germans (Volksdeutschen)(p. 103).

Salsitz shows his biases. He makes a blanket charge of the AK being "openly anti-Semitic" (p. 351), even though the AK had openly-Jewish members, including in its top echelons. After coming across some bodies of Jews, near a forest shelter, allegedly bearing the marks of pitchforks and axes (p. 328), Salsitz blames the local peasants for this deed--without a shred of evidence. (What if the killers were bandits, of any nationality, who preyed on Poles and Jews alike?)

There is irony in Salsitz' account of the Poles of Kolbuszowa purportedly going to the Germans to try to force the Judenrat to pay back taxes from ages ago, and for debts owed by Jews who had emigrated or died up to 25 years earlier. (p. 202). The modern Holocaust Industry is doing the same to Poland, on a vastly larger scale, and over 60 years after the events! (Perhaps Salsitz is projecting the exploitative attitudes of the modern Holocaust Industry unto WWII-era Poles).

How many of Salsitz' experiences are factual? The book is of the "Too many adventures, too many close brushes with death" format. In addition, at least in comparison with accounts written by Polish AK members, Salsitz is conspicuously vague about precise locations, dates, and especially the specifics of AK units with whom he was purportedly involved. It is hard to believe his account of being warned by a 16 year-old girl who supposedly overheard some AK members discussing their plans to kill Salsitz. (p. 353). (Underground matters were kept scrupulously secret from friends and family because they could "sing" under Gestapo tortures.)

The perceptive reader will recognize that Salsitz' book belongs to the same flight-from-malevolent-Poles genre as Jerzy Kosinski's fiction. See the detailed English-language Peczkis review of Czarny ptasior (THE BLACK BIRD-MONSTROSITY).

There have been at least three different versions in existence of how Krakow and its cultural treasures were saved from being blown-up by the retreating Germans. After including descriptions of such things as the explosive containers in the streets of Krakow (pp. 21-34), Salsitz gets into the act by making the first-ever, revisionist claim that it was a disguised Jewish woman, while working for the Germans, who actually saved Krakow (pp. 32-33). Quite an imaginative fellow, this Salsitz!

If Krakow historian Andrzej Chwalba is correct that actually the Germans never intended to destroy Krakow, the credibility of Salsitz' entire book is completely exploded (pardon the pun).

This book is an amazingly interesting and intriguing book which i strongly recommend to those people who enjoy love stories with a sad story behind it. Also i recommend this book to anyone who enjoys holocaust novels. The sad memoir touched my heart and i know it will to yours as well.