Written by Malgorzata Niezabitowska
Photographed by Tomasz Tomaszewski
In 1939 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland. Today fewer than 5,000 remain in the country once considered a "paradise for Jews." This book is about those stranded survivors of the Holocaust and the Communist reconstruction. Niezabitowska and Tomaszewski (a married couple) spent five years crisscrossing their country to produce this powerful work, in which both text and photographs are distinguished by their simplicity and integrity. In Lublin, which had a thriving prewar Jewish population of 40,000, they set out to find a minyan, the quorum of 10 men required to hold a Jewish service. They eventually find the 10, each of whom has his own quiet, terrible tale. Szloma Szmulewicz, the tailor, is straight out of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story. Szmulewicz is heartbroken because his daughter has disgraced him by marrying a Polish gentile, even though he owes his own life to gentile foresters who rescued him during the war. Jews turn up in other towns too. Zygmunt-Srul Warszawer is the last kosher butcher in Warsaw. An ebullient old fellow, he calls the Poles who helped him survive the war "my saviors." They call him "Uncle" and say, "This little Jew of ours is pretty neat, right?" There are signs of change. A Jewish lawyer observes that the younger generation is less anti-Semitic. "There is only one problem," he says, "the fact that in Poland there is no longer, unfortunately, any object for that sympathy. The Poles were a little tardy." (Friendly Press, $35)
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