Customer Reviews

The Bravest Battle: The Twenty-eight Days Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

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This historical account of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during WWII is absolutely astounding. A must-read, even for those who dislike reading about history. More importantly, it describes an amazing series of events that we, as a society, cannot let be forgotten. The sheer heroism and endurance of the ghetto fighters is a testament to the strength of the human spirit under times of duress such as we cannot imagine.

Despite my many years of companionship with Jewish friends, and a few stints working at JCC youth camps, my friend's comment was one that I might have made before reading this excellently written and incisive book. Kurzman tells the story of the Jewish resisters in Warsaw during the "Grossaktion"- the final rounding up and extermination of so many Polish Jews. The stories of individual courage, sacrifice, and heroism moved me in a way I could never have foreseen. Yes this book is one-sided (as another reviewer critiqued), but how could it be otherwise? The mercilessness with which the Germans pursued their quarry will never be matched, and an empathy for their motives would almost by necessity ring false. To view the real heroes (who make difficult and sometimes flawed choices along the way that expose them as the humans they are) of this book is to be enlightened about the Jewish history and character that we so rarely have an opportunity to experience through the mainstream media. If you seek an account of the almost impossible ways that people react to extreme oppression and terror, and the incredible resourcefulness that a people are capable of, then you will do well to read this book

I was inspired to pick up this book after seeing Polanski's "The Pianist." This book is an overview of the Warsaw Uprising (the first one occurring in the Jewish Ghetto in 1943).

Through what must have been exhaustive interviews with the survivors, many of whom may no longer be alive, Kurzman meticulously provides the details of the inspiring 28-day uprising, but in such a way as to absolutely captivate the reader. There may be biases or omissions of which I am not aware, but there was enough to give me a broad background on the uprising and its context -- and to keep me riveted on the struggle.

One disappointment was the production values of the 1993 Da Capo Press edition, which is a republication of Putnam's 1976 edition. From the look of the type and photos, it appears they may have actually shot the plates for the present edition from a printed copy of the original edition! -- the photos especially are of unforgivably poor quality.

But this doesn't detract from the tale of the uprising, which is told with compassion, and absorbed me totally for the better part of the 2 days it took to finish.

This is a marvelous account of the proudest moment in Jewish history. Kurzman's meticulous research and attention to detail add rich layers of atmosphere to his re-telling of the Uprising. Hundreds of participants are named, and the day-to-day account of the fighting is positively harrowing. The actions of Jewish fighters in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto rival those of any other armed uprising in the history of the world in terms of pure heroics in the face of utter destruction. Anyone who reads Kurzman's "Bravest Battle" is likely to agree.

Dan Kurzman is one of the best authors I have read on many subjects. The Bravest Battle is the only work that clearly outlines the historical struggle of the Warsaw Ghetto. The book clearly shows this struggle was NOT a revolution, and NOT a fight for freedom. The fight was to send a message to the world that Jews will fight for their dignity. Kurzman spent much time with the few survivors of the battle. He obtained first-hand accounts from the participants. If you enjoy this you will also enjoy his book Gensis 1948. This book will cure the amnesia that plagues the world in recent times about why Israel exists.

I have read several of Mr. Kurzman's books, The Race For Rome, Left To Die, Fatal Voyage and now The Bravest Battle 28 Days of The Warsaw Ghetto uprising. In all of them I felt that more research would have made for a better book, to be fair that could be said of any book. This is a fabulous book if you are looking for stories of bravery, it is not such a good book if you are looking for an in-depth examination of the battle such as Ryan's the Last Battle about Berlin or Beevor's Stalingrad. Mr. Kurzman seemed to rely almost exclusively on the Polish-Jewish side of events in writing this book, there are very few references to what the Germans were thinking and doing at the command level and no German order of battle. Some of the more well known stories are left out, the book bound in human flesh and given to an SS Commander as a battle momento is not mentioned, there is no mention of the German use of gigantic seige mortars and artillery to lay waste to the ghetto. This book is filled with so many fantastic stories that Steven Speilberg could make several movies from it...underground battles in the sewers as poorly armed civilians fight it out with one of the most professional armies of all times. Poor Jews dupped into working as a ghetto police force, turning in their friends and family only to be taken to a wall and shot when their usefulness is finished. Nazi's bringing in special dogs trained to smell for humans hiding under ground, acoustic listening devices being employed to find the sounds of humans in hidden bunkers. The horrible poison gas attacks when Jewish bunkers were discovered. Non-Jewish Poles refusing to help their Jewish countrymen. Pleas to the outside world to help that fall on deaf or indifferent ears. The core of these Ghetto Fighters were very young, to be in your late teens/early 20's and facing a fight for survival like these people did is incredible. Mr. Kurzman explains the Ghetto structure of Warsaw very well, it was broken down into different sections like the Productive Ghetto which the industrialists begged the Nazi's to not destroy, there were several times in the battle when the Nazi's would ask factory owners to go into the ghetto and announce that anyone who turned himself in would be given safe passage to eastern relocation work camps, sadly sometimes it worked. The Nazi's were masters of deception, it is scary even today to look back at how effecient and organized they were about the whole thing. Those who saw the movie Schindler's List will recognize many of the same tactics of genocide in this book. Being called to the train platform for re-settlement, rumors of death camps, stories from camp escapees. The description of the 1st ambush of German troops entering the ghetto will have you spellbound...one could only hope to be so brave if placed in such an impossible situation. This book is worth a read.

In this volume Dan Kurzman produces a comprehensive step-by-step, detailed, stirring, engaging and heartrending account of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprisings.
When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943, more than 300 000 ghetto inhabitants had already perished in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
As the author describes the 28 day battle of the ZOB and Betarist ZZW ended 2 000 years of Jewish submission to brutal persecution, pogroms and finally genocide, an iron will to survive that five years later would find expression in the reborn State of Israel.
65 years after the valour of the doomed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto echoed across Warsaw, the determination of the Jews to fight back against their murderers, against those who would destroy them, echoes in the Middle East.
Kurzman provides a day by day account of the 28 day struggle for survival.

The book focuses on the sadistic SS-Gruppenführer Jurgen Stroop, who led the attack of the Nazi forces on the Warsaw Ghetto, and on Mordechai Anielewicz, a leader of the Zionist-socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair and and Commander in Chief of the Jewish fighting Organization (ZOB).
Other heroes of the uprising included Captain Henryk Iwanski, the Polish Home Officer who gave all to help the Jews, and lost a son during the fighting.
He supported the Żydowski Związek Wojskowy (ŻZW), the Jewish Military Union, led by such great men as Pawel Frankel and David Appelbaum.
The book details how the ZOB and ZZW fought valiantly to avenge those who had been murdered, and their many surprise attacks on the Nazi forces.

We also learn how the British and American governments refused to help the besieged Jews of the Ghetto in any way.
' Breckinridge Long , the US assistant secretary of state in charge of refugee issues wrote in his diary...reflecting on American Jewish leaders who were trying to pressure their governments to save the Jews: "One danger in it all is that their activities may lend color to the charges of Hitler that this war is being fought on account of and at the instigation and direction of the Jewish leaders who were trying to pressure their governments to save the Jews".
A chilling statement that finds expression today in the anti-Jewish slogan of the violently anti-Israel "Anti War Movement" : "No War for Israel!"
Also of the reluctance of the USA and NATO forces to stop Iran's plans to build nuclear weapons for the express purposes of the genocide of Israel's Jews.
This inaction simply in order to avoid the wrath of world Moslems and the International Left.

Stories of heroism abound such as that of the twelve year old Jewish girl who died shielding her injured ten year old brother from the fires of the burning ghetto. No account of the heroism of the uprising could be complete without the harrowing details of the horrific Nazi atrocities. These include the SS, on the orders of Stroop, taking Jewish infants by the legs and smashing their heads against the wall, or machine gunning masses of Jewish children.
Even the suffering and cruel death of children could not move the hearts that were hardened by hate.

Photographs in the volume include a heartbreaking photo of Jewish children crying for food in the ghetto, as they starved to death, the humiliation and defeat on the face of a young Jewish woman being stripped by Nazi soldiers ,Jewish men, women and children being rounded up the Nazis, and the piles of Jewish corpses.

Moist of those Jews who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, including some of the key resistance leaders, moved to Israel, were their descendants still live today.
Let that be a reminder to those sick and evil people who try to equate the Israeli Jews with the Nazis.
The 16 year old ZW fighter Jurek Plonski, immigrated to Israel, where at the time of the writing of this book, he lived on a kibbutz. His son was killed in the Yom Kippur War.
Other surviving fighters founded the Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot (Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz) in Western Galilee.

I found this to be a great book about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was well written, so I found it easy to get through the book.
I have read many books about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and one of the things I really liked about this one, was that the author writes about both the two Jewish fighting organizations. Since all the leaders of ZZW died before the war was over, there were few people left to tell their story and there a therefore very little about its members in most books. (Marian Apfelbaum has written a book about ZZW, where he tries to put the record straight. His book is called 'Retour sur le Ghetto de Varsovie')
Dan Kurzman has interviewed two ZZW fighters and some others that knew them. All in all, Dan Kurzman has spoken to many witnesses and he has read many documents and books about the topic. He has also made use of German sources.
Yes, it is very obvious who he prefers, but when you are dealing with a story like this, who else than the Jewish fighters would you side with?

If you enjoyed this non-fiction account of the Warsaw getto uprising, I highly recommend Mila 18, by Leon Uris.

The author includes a day-to-day account of the Uprising, and his bibliography is very extensive. He factors the ZZW as well as the ZOB, and gives seldom-mentioned credit to Polish-gentile fighters such as Wolinski and Iwanski, who admittedly are not usually appreciated. (p. 348). WARNING: The descriptions of German cruelties may upset sensitive readers.

Unfortunately, Kurzman's otherwise-excellent work is cheapened by innuendoes, such as the unsupported one about the Polish-Government-in-Exile, and the Polish Underground, not being more supportive of the Jews out of fear of thereby becoming discredited in the eyes of the Polish population (e. g., p. 285), which he generalizes--again without evidence--as being predominantly anti-Semitic. (e. g., p. 49).

Pointedly, the essence of guerilla warfare is the well-planned hit-and-run attack, aimed to maximize the damage to the enemy. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the opposite. For the Polish Underground to support it more extensively, it would mean a costly investment in something known in advance to have no chance of success, incapable of saving Jewish lives and potentially dooming many Polish lives while--all this time--doing virtually no harm to the German war effort.

Kurzman sometimes drifts into the following mindset: If Poles do not help Jews, it is because they are anti-Semitic. If they do help Jews--well, then they're doing that in order to prove that they are not anti-Semitic! He incorrectly states that the NSZ was fascist. (p. 49, 338). Part of the problem is his uncritical inclusion of Communist accounts.

The following paragraph contains some correctives (see also my reviews of the following, all of which except the first one are Jewish works.). [For some reason, Amazon software has edited out the links, so I provide boldfaced titles instead.]

Against Kurzman's misrepresentation of Polish firefighters, see DESTROY WARSAW! Against the charge of Poles delighting in Jewish suffering (hoodlum element excepted), other Polonophobic generalizations that Kurzman engages in, and the myth of plentiful arms accessible to the Polish Underground (p. 54), see A SURPLUS OF MEMORY. For the truth about the Polish Underground and the sewer system, and the actual, tactic-based and fear-based reasons for Poles sometimes betraying Jews who had fled the Ghetto and later Uprising, see MURANOWSKA 7. Finally, did you realize that the Polish Underground gave almost ten times the arms to the Jews than Kurzman admits? See TWO FLAGS: RETURN TO THE WARSAW GHETTO.

Want to learn more? See the Peczkis Listmania: WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING: MYTHS VS. FACTS.