Journey to Poland : A Family Mission [Paperback]

David S. Greenfield (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Journey to Poland...is a most impressive and engaging work." -- David E. Behrman, Behrman House Publishers and Booksellers, 1997

"Journey to Poland" ... a moving testimony to your family experience -- James Carroll, columnist, the Boston Globe, May, 1997

"Journey to Poland" ...is a magnificent memorial to your family and our people in Poland. -- Rabbi Samuel Chiel, Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA 1997

... work such as yours is not only necessary and impressive, but an important and valuable addition to Holocaust literature ..... -- U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., March, 1997

...one man's effort to reduce a familiar statistic to comprehensible human proportions.. he succeeds brilliantly, with subtlety, restraint and passion. -- Lee Gruenfeld, Dutton Books, February, 1997

The words are deeply moving, the photographs moving beyond words. -- Opening Exhibition viewer, April, 1995

From the Author

Small crinkled-edged black and white photos of Europe filled albums and boxes in my home when I was growing up. They were the product of my father's work with a Leica III camera in various refugee centers after the Second World War. These simple pictures represented the world from which I came, and were very special to me. The look and feel of those photos, as well as the 35 mm photojournalism of the 40’s and 50’s, continue to influence my "through-the-lens" vision today. So it was natural for me to photographically record a journey to my parents' former homes in Poland a few years ago. The volume of images and personal reflections that emerged from the mission honors my parents, Rachele and Joseph. They chose a courageous path out of the darkness of the Holocaust to a new life.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 45 pages
• Publisher: fotoVisions (February 3, 1997)
• ISBN-10: 0970780907
• ISBN-13: 978-0970780904
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,806,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hauntingly evocative journey of discovery, February 3, 2001

By 

Lee Gruenfeld "www-leegruenfeld-com" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Journey to Poland : A Family Mission (Paperback)

Since the close of World War II, many talented writers have tried to convey to the rest of the world something of the enormity of the Holocaust.

All failed utterly.

Those who were too poetic or philosophical tended to omit the visceral depravity that defined the period. Those too literal and graphic succeeded only in triggering the mind's self-protective mechanisms that clamped down on our emotions and rendered us numb.

In this slim (45 pages), hauntingly evocative volume, David Greenfield takes a different approach. Instead of asking us to absorb the story of six million people, he offers us only a fleeting glimpse of two - his parents. And rather then inundating us with all-too-familiar and largely incomprehensible images taken during the war, he invites us instead to view only a handful of photographs of contemporary Poland that might properly be called afterimages.

These photographs and accompanying text document a trip to Poland in 1993 during which Greenfield wanted to investigate firsthand his father's hometown and to meet the family of the Polish Catholic woman who risked her life to save his mother and her sister during the war.

Under other circumstances, his simple picture of a nondescript, empty room with a wooden-slatted platform floor would be meaningless. But in the context of this book, and told that this place was a delousing center for incoming inmates to the Majdanek concentration camp, this photograph gives one's imagination free rein to conjure up its own library of nightmares more effectively than any purely literal depiction possibly could.

This as much the author's story as that of his parents. One gets the clear impression that his purpose wasn't so much to stand aside and tell their story objectively as it was to tell it specifically through his own eyes, to convey something of how it affected him personally. There was no attempt to be exhaustive, which is impossible anyway, or to provide a factual history lesson; the dates and locations he cites are not there so much for the historical record as they are to drive home the point that these were real events that happened to real people.

Josef Stalin once said that the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is a statistic. Journey to Poland is one man's effort to reduce a familiar statistic to comprehensible human proportions, and in this he succeeds brilliantly, with subtlety, restraint and passion.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Family Memory Come Alive, February 3, 2001

By 

Donna Toman "Avid reader" (Waban, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journey to Poland : A Family Mission (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book that encompasses photos, stories and a history of survival. David Greenfield went with his family (including his son and daughter) to search and ultimately visit the family who took his parent into hiding during WWII. This compassionate family was able to see the results of their effort in ways few can appreciate--from the faces of the grandchildren. This book chronicles times and places with gorgeous and meaningful photographs and notes. Highly recommended!