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The Victory (Writings from an Unbound Europe)

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This book is now available in a volume that has the first book of the saga of the Jewish boy growing up in German-occupied Poland and later in post-war Poland. That volume is called "The Jewish War and The Victory," and it is (as of this writing) available from Amazon. For the new double-book, the author has reduced some necessarily duplicate material, but the impact is largely the same.

"The Victory" details the struggles of the boy and his mother to live in post-war Poland and to come to terms with their Jewishness and the surprisingly violent resurgence of anti-Semitism in their world. The prose is spare and the reporting as objective as can be achieved. Survival is a tough business, and the reader will feel exhausted after hearing the narrator tell his story.

It won't surprise you that the title is ironic.

The second in a five part series dealing with Poland and WWII, this deals with 1944-1947. As a result of denying their Jewish identity a boy and his mother have survived the horrors of war, while most of their relatives, neighbors and communities have been destoyed. The unexpected problem is how to survive the peace. As ethnic and political animosities resurface in a fluid and lawless post war Poland the child begins to believe that there is only war, and peace is a period where war continues, barely hidden, waiting to erupt again. This is an excellent short book, more fact than fiction, and worth the time to read.