Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter – The Past Within me - Hardcover

Rotem, Simha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300057970 ISBN 13: 9780300057973

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1995

Synopsis

When the Nazis decided to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, five hundred young Jewish fighters within the Ghetto rose up to defy them. With no weapons, no influence, and no experience in warfare, they managed to resist the Germans for almost a month. In the end, when the battle was lost, the surviving Jews were led out of the ruins through the sewers by a nineteen-year-old fighter known as Kazik. As head courier of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which had planned and executed the uprising, Kazik spent the rest of the war helping to care for the several thousand Jews who still remained in Warsaw. This book - an extraordinary story of courage and perseverance - is Kazik's wartime memoir. In stark, spare detail, Kazik reports on the efforts to prepare for the defense of the Warsaw Ghetto, the calamitous battle with the Germans, and the rescue of the few Jews who were still alive after the Ghetto was destroyed. He describes how he assumed a false Aryan identity in order to pass through the city as he collected money and found hiding places for the survivors. Constantly on guard, fearful of informers, his life always in danger, he nevertheless plotted resourcefully to aid his fellow Jews. He tells how he joined the Poles during their ill-fated uprising against the Nazis in Warsaw in 1944, had further brushes with death assisting the Polish underground, and returned to Warsaw to watch its liberation by the Russian army.

About this title

Review:

"A moving record of the greatest heroism and a chronicle of humanity's darkest hour." -- Adam Le Bor, The Times

"It had me transfixed. I could do nothing else until I finished it and could think of nothing else after I put it down." -- Chaim Bermant, Literary Review

"This memoir is the most gripping account of wartime guerilla survival against all the odds that I have ever read." -- Robert Carver, The Scotsman

'A stunning, frightening book.' -- Hugh MacDonald, The Herald (Glasgow), 9 February 2002

Synopsis:

This text features the memoirs of Simha Rotem and his experiences of the uprising in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in 1943. He describes the terrible battle, how he assumed a false Aryan identity as he found hiding places for survivors, and finally witnessed liberation by the Russians.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0300057970
• ISBN 13: 9780300057973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 196