From Publishers Weekly
Transported from the Warsaw Ghetto in September 1942, and bound for the Treblinka extermination camp, Mazor escaped from a cattle car. His wife fled from the ghetto a month earlier by climbing a cemetery wall. Their dramatic escapes are described in this valuable memoir. Originally published in French in 1955, the book poignantly evokes the moral climate of the Warsaw Ghetto, "a state of feverish hopelessness coupled, despite everything, with a faith in liberation." Mazor, a Russian Jewish lawyer who emigrated to Poland after the Bolshevik revolution, moved to Paris at the end of WW II and died in the 1970s. He charges that the Warsaw Ghetto's Judenrat (German-appointed Jewish council) refused to take those measures that were within its powers to alleviate the misery of the ghetto's inhabitants. Providing a moving picture of the ghetto's convulsive day-to-day existence, he analyzes its social structure and documents the activities of its tenement committees, political parties and relief organizations.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Though Mazor, a Polish Jew who was discharged to the Treblinka death camp in 1942 but escaped, wrote this account of the Warsaw ghetto in the Fifties, it has only now been translated. It offers a valuable picture of the social structure and problems of the Warsaw ghetto, describing such social institutions as the Judenrat, Mutual Aid, and the Tenement Committees and how they functioned. In addition, it offers observations on the feelings and moral dilemmas of the Jewish victims. While not an official history of the ghetto, Mazor's account does provide important impressions of what it was like to live in unspeakable conditions and in utter daily terror. The book presents a compelling illustration of the frustration, spirit, and hope of the Jews who suffered and perished in the Warsaw ghetto. Recommended for academic libraries and for libraries with a special interest in the Holocaust and Jewish people.
- Mary Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Mary Salony, West Virginia Northern Community Coll. Lib., Wheeling
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
