Customer Reviews

Quiet Hero: Secrets from My Father's Past

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Journalist Rita Cosby tells the story of her father's heroic past -- a past she never knew -- and it is, at once, a great historical account of her dad's youth fighting the Nazi's during WWII, but also a story of a daughter finally getting to know her father.

It starts with Rita's discovery, after her mother's death, of a tattered suitcase filled with mysterious mementos from war including a Polish resistance armband, rusted dog tags, and a POW identity card with the name Ryszard Kossobudzki. It ends with an emotional journey the father and daughter take back to Poland. In between, the story is sometimes harrowing, but beautifully told.

This book has inspired me to ask questions of my own family's past. Highly recommended...and a great Father's Day gift.

I started reading this book last night and fell in love with it at the very first page! Rita Cosby is the kind of author that really knows how to hook her readers with clear, concise writing full of raw emotion. She takes you on her journey and draws you in. I couldn't put this book down and stayed up all night reading it. I highly recommend this treasure for anyone - it's amazing!

Rita Cosby has scored a touchdown (pardon the cliche) with this book, which accomplishes several things beyond just being a great father-daughter story. This book sheds light on a marginally told story of Poland's war during WWII, and it is a superb narrative-documentary of partisan warfare. This is a book for everyone.
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As a reader, I had a hard time putting this book down. This is the story of fate intervening in the form of a daughter looking through her recently deceased mother's papers and discovering that her father was possibly not the person she always thought she knew. Cosby's parents divorced when Cosby was a presumably a teenager. While her father moved on with his life with a remarriage and another child, Cosby's mother never stopped loving her (ex)husband. Over the years, Cosby and her father were estranged and seemingly that chasm had widened by the time of her mother's death. Fortunately for Cosby and her readers, her discovery didn't result in a 'my daddy was an axe murderer' yarn. Her father's secret life was an incredible tale of great sacrifice and her father really was a
'quiet hero'.
With her journalist's eye for a story, Rita Cosby has taken her reader along on her journey of reconciliation and revelation regarding her father's early life as a barely teenaged resistance fighter initially distributing anti-nazi materials within a couple of blocks of the Warsaw ghetto to full-blown member of the polish resistance movement during WWII. Eventually her father is captured by the nazis and installed in an internment camp where his body is broken, but his spirit survives. Cosby goes back to Poland with her father and relates his experiences and sees him reunited with long separated friends over sixty years later.
This beautifully written book is a touching tribute to the father Cosby never really knew but fortunately found. Fiction is great, but this is an amazing story that is poignant, terrifying, and true.

I was a little disappointed in the writing; however, perhaps its simple style is in keeping with low-key image and persona of the "hero" himself. Very interesting reading for those who wish to know more about the Polish people's response to the German invasion. Much is written about the Holocaust and its victims. I was surprised to learn that just as many non-Jewish Polish citizens were killed as Jewish, over 3 million each. Devastating. Again, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WWII history, especially those of Polish descent who will be proud to learn just how courageously those of their nationality fought. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and have lent it to friends and even bought one for my brother. Enjoy!

In addition, the true story of an adult child who wishes to repair her relationship with her estranged father, as was the impetus for the author, may provide a lesson for any of us who may find himself or herself in this position.

As a child of European immigrants, you never hear the real story of WWII and what it was like for our parents generation. This true story brings out a father's war in Poland against the Nazi's and a daughter's struggle to relate to her distant father. Great story for men and women about relating to their parents and to what they actually went through during WWII. If you have relatives that immigrated or friends that immigrated, get them this book!

This book is a Rare Find, it goes beyond the history book telling of facts and figures. It is a upclose and very personal view of one's raw courage and instincts when experiencing gruesome deadly combat. Rarely do combat books show the personel tragedy and sacrafice sustained by combattants and how their lives are altered forever. This book does that and more, it show the resilence and fortitude of the human spirit. And the tragedy of many soldiers, being betrayed by almost everyone. I should know, I was a SF Medic during Vietnam and my father was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, and escaped Stalag IVB in April of 45. This book will answer many questions for the families of combat Vets, and hopefully heal many souls.

Instead of repeating other reviewers, I focus on matters of direct historical significance. This is based on the testimony of Ryszard Kossobudzki (later Anglicized to Cosby), as interviewed by Rita Cosby, his journalist daughter.

The young "Rys" (short for Ryszard, the Polish for Richard) went through the 1939 German-Soviet conquest of Poland. He described the carnage he saw. Then things only got worse. Ryszard comments: "While the general Polish population was not as actively persecuted as the Jews, times were still hard under the occupation. German soldiers treated the Poles like animals, and supplies were stringently rationed... [Non-Volksdeutsche]...were forced to trade on a newly emergent black market for their survival." (p. 48).

The Polish intelligentsia (notably the politicians, teachers, priests, artists, etc.) were systematically exterminated by the Germans. (p. 53). In time, 3 million Polish gentiles were murdered by the Germans along with the 3 million Polish Jews. (p. 289). [It is hardly surprising that some Amazon reviewers report never before having heard of the 3 million Polish victims.]

As a teenager, "Rys" joined the ORLETA (Young Eagles), a Scout-like organization that became part of the Polish guerrilla movement (A. K., or Armia Krajowa). He was involved in scattering leaflets, and, later, falsified his age as 16 in order to actively participate in A.K. combat. Also, "...the Resistance made bombs, assassinated Gestapo agents, derailed trains, blew up bridges, aided Jews in hiding, and printed more than eleven hundred anti-Nazi periodicals." (p. 61). "The Germans were ruthless, and would torture anyone they caught whom they suspected of involvement with the Resistance." (p. 65). To reduce the danger of betrayals under torture, everyone in the A.K. knew each other only by the nom de guerre.

One common Holocaust myth is the one about non-Jewish Poles quickly knowing that millions of Jews were being gassed and cremated on their soil. This was not so. "Rys", while visiting his cousin in Lublin, climbed a church steeple to see the environs. He saw in the distance a camp (later identified as Maidanek/Majdanek) amidst conflicting rumors as to what went on there. He recognized the chimney and the smoke, and, after a shift of wind, noticed the sickening stench, which they all mistook for burning garbage. Finally, all this was quite late in the Holocaust of Polish Jews. (Spring 1943). (pp. 68-69). It is obvious that, in the absence of hindsight, distantly-originating sights and smells do not translate into certainty about human bodies being cremated, the scale of these acts (Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?), much less the nationality of the people being cremated.

"Rys" devotes considerable attention to his combat participation in the ill-fated, Soviet-betrayed Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Although there was nominally tens of thousands of A.K. soldiers participating, only the equivalent of about 2,500 of them could be said to be "adequately" armed. (p. 87). Some weapons had been hidden in the nearby woods but, with the Germans swarming around Warsaw, the Polish fighters lacked access to them. (p. 86).

Rita Cosby digresses from her father as she recounts her interview of Stan Aronson, an openly-Jewish member of an elite branch of the A.K. (KEDYW?). (pp. 76-78). He was well-accepted by his Polish colleagues, and was wounded in the Warsaw Uprising.

"Rys" describes Polish ingenuity during the Warsaw Uprising: "When Warsaw's water supply was cut off, the Poles collected rainwater from bomb craters and shared water from wells. When the Nazis were running daily air raids and shelling relentlessly with heavy artillery, the Poles made primitive weapons such as homemade grenades out of unexploded shells or Molotov cocktails using gasoline. They created launchers out of car springs, which could carry the weapons almost two hundred feet." (p. 89).

Both sides made mistakes during the Uprising. Some 500 Poles lost their lives when an "abandoned" German tank turned out to have a time bomb (although more recent evidence suggests that it could have been an explosive accidently set off, not a boobytrap: p. 278). "Rys" and his men shot to pieces a unit of Germans that had blundered too close to the Polish positions. At another time, his men raised helmets on sticks to successfully deceive the Germans into exhausting their ammunition on nonexistent Polish fighters, thereby becoming forced to surrender: p. 273).

The Germans used human shields (Polish women and children) around their tanks, and then ran them over. All in all, the carnage of the Uprising is described by "Rys" in quite a graphic manner. So are the horrors of combatants and civilians evacuating through Warsaw's sewers. "Rys" also pays tribute to the Polish women in the Uprising. (p. 143).

After the surrender of the Uprising, "Rys" was deported into Germany, and became a POW incarcerated at Stalag IV B. He saw the bright fires of the February 1945 Allied bombing of Dresden. The Germans approached the Poles with the offer of freedom, in return for being parachuted into Poland to fight the Soviets. (p. 207). All the Poles refused. Later, "Rys" and hundreds of other POWs escaped in order to avoid falling into Soviet hands, and successfully walked to the American lines.

This book has a moving ending. For instance, "Rys" and his daughter open up a suitcase, thought long thrown away, full of wartime mementos that "Rys' hasn't looked at for 60 years. (p. 259-on). Father and daughter later visit Poland, including all the wartime locations, and get to meet Poland's President Kaczynski. And so on...

I loved this book. It should be a must read for every student in high school. How smart, brave and resourceful these young men and women in Poland were during such a difficult time. God bless them for being so patriotic and brave. Ms. Cosby was able to do what so many of us baby boomers did not, and that was to actually talk to her fathers about the war. My dad served in the army during the war and I had very little conversation with him about this time of his life. Sometimes we should talk less and ask more questions before its too late. Thanks Rita for a wonderul book.

"Quiet Hero" is simply amazing. Sure have missed seeing Rita Cosby on Fox News Channel and msnbc but I'm so pleased to see her putting her unparalleled journalistic skills to amazingly brilliant use in "Secrets from My Father's Past".

I couldn't get through the first chapter without crying!

I learned so much from this book. Things about WWII I never would have known! Most importantly, I learned how to repair relationships and the importance of communication.

Do yourself a favor and get a copy of "Quiet Hero". It will open your eyes and your heart. Amazing, amazing, amazing story.