BARTOSZEWSKI WŁADYSŁAW, LEWINÓWNA ZOFIA
HE ONE IS FROM MY HOMELAND
POLISH PEOPLE TO HELP THE JEWS 1939-1945
2nd ed. expanded. Cracow 1969, Znak Publishing House, pp [2] 1108, format: 13.5x20.5.
A pioneering work. For the subject: previously silent Polish-Jewish relations during the war. And for the method: the then-unpracticed on a wider scale telling of history by means of evoked accounts of participants and witnesses to the events.
"At that time, almost half a century ago," said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski in the third edition of the book (2007), "the history of this humanitarian action, the most difficult in the history of Poland, and perhaps even the world, which was to save lives doomed to extermination, to oppose the decision of genocide planned on a scale unprecedented in the modern history of Europe, was known only to a few."
Those who provided help continued to conceal it after the war for various reasons. Out of modesty, out of fear of the reaction of their neighbors, because, as a rule, without their knowledge, often against their will, sometimes they also hid their charges from them. And out of fear of robbers, greedy for the supposed profit of the rescuers. Many of the survivors left Poland, most wanted to banish the bad time from their memories. There was no room in the historical policy of the communist authorities for complex Polish-Jewish relations. And in Israel, too, the commemoration of the Holocaust was not well regarded until the Eichmann trial (1961).
(...)
Contacts with the authors of the accounts, additions and biographical notes were taken by Zofia Lewinowna. Andrzej Kaczynski
PUBLISHER'S HARDCOVER WITH WRAPPER
Condition BDB-/ small tears on edges of wrapper, paraphrase on title page, erased stamps on back of title page and last page, , bibl. stickers on back part of wrapper, despite defects quite a NICE piece
