A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto [Hardcover]

Abraham Lewin (Author), Antony Polonsky (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1989 | ISBN-10: 0631162151 | ISBN-13: 978-0631162155 | Edition: First

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A secondary-school teacher born to Hasidic parents, Lewin helped build and maintain the underground archives in the Warsaw ghetto and is presumed to have died just before or during the tragic ghetto uprising. His diary, translated into English for the first time, is a powerful and important document that rings with the moral force and literary skill of an Old Testament prophet. The sections preserved cover only the period from April 1942 to January 1943, but Lewin hears all, sees all, records all: the starvation and disease, the desperate grasping for signs of hope; the cooperation among Poles and Jews; the children smuggling food; the slaughter of Jews in surrounding communities and then in the sealed-off Warsaw ghetto; the daily deportations to the Treblinka death camp (which took his wife from him). Lewin's absolute clarity of vision gives this grim document compelling power.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Shortly before his death, Lewin kept a diary covering the period April 1942-January 1943. The 47-year-old school teacher wrote with such clarity and sensitivity that this work will surely become an important source for future investigations into the fate of Warsaw's enormous Jewish population. The editor's lengthy introduction offers sharp historical perspective, while Lewin himself provides a wealth of information on a wide array of ghetto-related topics--rationing, collaboration, deportation, day-to-day tensions, etc. Yet the diarist is most powerful when he becomes personal; separation from his wife prompts "Eclipse of the sun, universal blackness. My Luba was taken away." For most public and academic libraries.
- Mark R. Yerburgh, Trinity Coll. Lib., Burlington, Vt.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Pub; First edition (February 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631162151
• ISBN-13: 978-0631162155
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,601,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A window into the genocide and misery of the Warsaw Ghetto, April 21, 2008

By 

Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto (Hardcover)

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 anihilate the Jews are mirrored by those of Iranian modern day Hitler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Islamo-Nazi regime, Hamas and Hezbollah. 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.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incisive Diary Clarifies Many Holocaust-Related Misconceptions, September 7, 2007

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto (Paperback)

Abraham Lewin kept a diary from early 1942 through early 1943. He focused on the mass deportation of Warsaw's Jews to their deaths at Treblinka in mid-late 1942.

Lewin elaborates on the cooperation of Poles and Jews in the smuggling of food and other items into the Warsaw Ghetto, including the habit of the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) turning a blind eye to such smuggling (p. 62). He sided with those Jews who believed that Polish-Jewish relations had improved as a result of their common suffering (pp. 123-124). And, although Lewin mentions some examples of Poles denouncing fugitive Jews, he later makes it clear that Poles were not responsible for the roundup and extermination of Jews. For example: "Twenty Ukrainians, Jewish policemen (a few dozen) and a small number of Germans lead a crowd of 3,000 Jews to the slaughter." (p. 151).

In common with some other chroniclers, Lewin reserves his harshest criticism for the collaborationist Jewish ghetto police. For example: "Russian pogromists would have been unable to make a more thorough and shattering pogrom than that carried out by the Jewish police." (p. 160). "Today, the Jewish police carried out the `action' with savage brutality. They simply ran riot." (p. 164).

Some recent Holocaust materials have included the totally preposterous suggestion that the Poles somehow consented to the extermination of the Jews on their soil, or that Polish protests may have saved the Jews. In actuality, the Germans had not the slightest concern about the wishes of the Polish untermenschen. A protest was a form of suicide, as Lewin relates: "A Christian woman on Leszno Street, seeing the wagons with those who have been rounded up, curses the Germans. She presents her chest and is shot. On Nowy Swiat, a Christian woman stands defiantly, kneels on the pavement and prays to God to turn his sword against the executioners--she had seen how a gendarme killed a Jewish boy." (p. 141)

Although Jews and Poles may have been "unequal victims", Lewin doesn't neglect the latter: "Let us not forget: the Poles are in second place in the table of tragic losses among the nations, just behind the Jews. They have given, after us, the greatest number of victims to the Gestapo, and this does not take into account the destruction of the country." (p. 124). "Jewish and Polish blood is spilled, it mingles together and, crying to the heavens, it demands revenge!" (p. 125).

Lewin mentions the German "action" against the rural Poles in the Zamosc region (p. 227), and comments: "In fact, there are reports of unrest and turmoil among the Poles over the mass-expulsions of Poles in the Zamosc area." (p. 233). Lewin had no illusions as to what the Germans were capable of: "They began with us and will finish with other peoples: Poles, Czechs, Serbs and many others." (p. 239).

In the 19th century, Polish mystic Andrzej Towianski thought of the Polish people as the "Jesus Christ of Nations", whose sufferings would save the world (p. 264). But Poles were not alone in such musings. Interestingly, Lewin wrote of his entertaining of Towianski-like thoughts about the Jewish people (p. 117).