The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom [Paperback]

Adam Czerniakow (Author), Raul Hilberg (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 1999

Adam Czerniakow was a Polish Jew who killed himself on July 23, 1942—on the face of it not an uncommon occurrence in those times. But there is more to the story than the tragic death of one man among so many millions. Czerniakow was for almost three years the chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat—a Jew, devoted to his people, who served as the Nazi-sponsored “mayor” of the Warsaw Ghetto. His personal dealings with the German authorities bring to this daily record of events a depth of knowledge, accuracy of detail, and panorama of view that was possible to no other participant in the epic prelude to the final doom of the largest captive Jewish community in Eastern Europe. This secret journal is not only the testimony of an unbearable personal burden but the documentary of the Ghetto’s terminal agony. It is the most important diary to emerge from the Holocaust. “A tale of Kafaesque horror.”—Houston Chronicle. “An astonishing record of desperate adaptation and resilient will.”—The New Leader. “Without parallel.”—Isaiah Trunk, author of Judenrat. “Enormously evocative.”—Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal. “A nightmare Alice-in-Wonderland...intensely dramatic in the aggregate for all the matter-of-factness of individual entries...The Diary of Adam Czerniakow makes a deep, deep impression.”—Peter Osnos, Washington Post.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A major event! (Herman Wouk )

A nightmare Alice-in-Wonderland...intensely dramatic entries. The diary makes a deep, deep impression. (Peter Osnos Washington Post )

Meticulously factual and nonetheless moving. (New Yorker )

Enormously evocative. (Dorothy Rabinowitz Wall Street Journal )

Without parallel. (Isaiah Trunk )

About the Author

Raul Hilberg is the author of The Destruction of the European Jews and the foremost historian of the Holocaust. Stanislaw Staron, now deceased, taught political science at the University of Vermont. Josef Kermisz was director of archives at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (March 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566632307
• ISBN-13: 978-1566632300
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > History > Historical Study > Oral History

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the read--but get the background first, March 12, 2001

By 

lisatheratgirl "lisatheratgirl" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Paperback)

This is the daily diary of the man who was the head of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation and most of the ghetto period. Czerniakow was misunderstood by a lot of people, and to avoid this I suggest some background reading about the ghetto first (Emanuel Ringelblum's Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Bogdan Wojdowski's Bread for the Departed, John Hersey's The Wall (fiction)). This is because Czerniakow does not give a lot of detail about life in the ghetto (and occupied Warsaw before the ghetto) for the ordinary person. It does not at all mean he was unaware of conditions; he was trying to do an impossible job and please everyone at the same time: the ghetto residents, the other council members, the profiteers, the Polish city administration, the German army, and the SS. That he accomplished any positive goals at all is remarkable and his story must be looked at from that perspective. It comes across clearly that he acted according to his conscience and put his personal concerns last. Without the introductions and the supplementary notes the diary might be difficult to understand, as Czerniakow did not always put down full names or explanations and kept entries brief. It was suggested he may have been afraid of it falling into the wrong hands with good reason. Therefore, I would say it takes a reader with some knowledge of the ghetto period and the Nazi occupation of Poland to get the fullest understanding from this book. I do on that basis give it the highest recommendation.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jews and Poles Degraded by the German Nazi Occupation, March 16, 2007

By 

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

This review is from: The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Paperback)

Adam Czerniakow's diary covers the period from the German attack on Poland (early September 1939) through late July 1942. At that time, faced with the prospect of turning over thousands of Jews for the first transports to the death camp at Treblinka, Czerniakow chose to commit suicide instead.

While, of course, focusing on the sufferings of the Jews, Czerniakow never loses sight of the sufferings of the Poles. For instance, he includes an entry on the partial destruction of the Royal Castle and the Church (actually, Cathedral) of St. John, by German artillery (p. 75). He also mentions the massacre of Poles (and some Jews) by the Germans at Wawer (late December, 1939; p. 103). Czerniakow first mentions Treblinka while it had only been used as a forced-labor camp for mostly Poles (p. 316).

The creation of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Germans uprooted a large number of Poles as well as Jews, as described in a report by Czerniakow: "The resettlement, encompassing 700 ethnic Germans, 113,000 Poles, and 138,000 Jews, was carried out at once; 11,567 non-Jewish apartments in the Jewish district and some 13,800 Jewish apartments in the rest of the city were surrendered." (p. 396). Clearly, at that stage of the German occupation, property acquisition was very much a two-way street.

The Germans enclosed the Jews in the ghetto in order to starve them, but both Poles and Jews cooperated to thwart this German intention. In the introduction, Josef Kermisz elaborates on this: "If Warsaw's Jews had had to live on the official bread ration, they would all have died of starvation in the first year. Czerniakow tells stories of smugglers and underground trade...The German plan, to starve the Jews to death quickly, was foiled...Thousands, Jews and non-Jews, were occupied with smuggling." (p. 13).

Czerniakow mentions some events whose potential significance was not realized until later. For example, in the July 1, 1940 entry in his diary, Czerniakow alludes to the German plan to resettle both German and Polish Jews in Madagascar (p. 169).

Ironically, in the first two years of the German occupation, Poles were more likely to be killed by the Germans than Jews. At times, Poles actually disguised themselves as Jews! Czerniakow describes this in two entries; that of February 20, 1940 (p. 119) and of May 8, 1940 (p. 147). In the latter, he writes: "Some Poles are beginning to wear Jewish armbands [to avoid being impressed for labor in Germany]." The brackets had been inserted by the editors of this volume.

Both Poles and Jews were corrupted by the brutalities of the German occupation. The Polish blackmailers (szmalcowniki) are well known, but it is seldom realized that they also had their Jewish counterparts. Josef Kermisz commented: "Czerniakow poured out his wrath on Jews who served the Germans, the informers, extortionists, and underworld figures who degraded and corrupted the ghetto." (p. 19). The looting of even the dead was not limited to Poles. In the entry for November 9, 1941, Czerniakow wrote: "A report of the Order Service about cases of graves being dug up by some gang to extract gold teeth from the dead." (p. 297).

Czerniakow sheds light on the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa). Some of their worst members were actually Volksdeutche (prewar Polish citizens of German extraction). In the entry for June 10, 1942, Czerniakow commented: "Today, Junacy [an informal designation of uniformed youth groups, mainly ethnic German] searched the cellars of the house at 20 Chlodna Street, allegedly looking for hidden leather." (p. 365). Again, the content in the brackets had been supplied by the editors of this volume.

Finally, there is a place for humor in Czerniakow's diary. He speaks of "horizontal Aryans" and "vertical Aryans." (p. 192). The former refers to infant Jews who had been baptized, while the latter refers to Jews who had converted to Christianity as adults. (Of course, under Nazi racial laws, Jews who had converted to Christianity were not recognized as Aryans. They were still considered to be Jews, and treated accordingly).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hell in a small place, July 23, 2008

By 

Ron Braithwaite "Hummingbird God" (El Indio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Paperback)

This diary is a must read for those who would study the Holocaust. It is a study of a decent man under indecent circumstances. He does what he can to help but, in so doing, he necessarily is complicit with the Nazis. If he had been able to foretell the end result, he may have taken a different path. He couldn't. The Holocaust was a work in progress and didn't, even from the Nazi perspective, start as a plan for annihilation. It started as a plan to contain and control people, many of whom were non-Jews.

Czerniaikow did as much as he could to protect his increasingly confined and crowded people. His success made the end all the more terrible. His document is that of the complexities and irrationality of a system terrible beyond its own expectations. Yes, Czerniakow, as a leader, was complicit but he did as well as he could.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico