In the first three days [of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising]; the Germans didn't take a single Jew out of the buildings. After their attempts to penetrate the Ghetto had failed; they decided to spare themselves casualties by destroying it from outside with cannon and aerial bombings. A few days later the Ghetto was totally destroyed. . . . The 'streets' were nothing but rows of smoldering ruins. It was hard to cross them without stepping on charred bodies.―KazikWhen 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.Suspenseful; moving; and remarkably heroic; Kazik's memoir is only the second source to be published on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It will help demolish the image of Jews as submissive victims in the Holocaust.
#431202 in Books 1997-08-19Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 1.72 x 6.53 x 9.55l; #File Name: 0300072333556 pages
Review
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Good but limited overviewBy R. L. HuffTwo veteran intelligence officers from both sides of the Wall describe the history of their empires' respective operations against one other at the Cold War's hottest frontline of West Berlin. It *is* quite comprehensive and balanced for the ground it covers; but the story could have been extended for another two and a half decades past the Wall. Apparently they felt that intelligence operations thereafter settled into moribund cat and mouse games with none of the saber-rattling drama of the earlier era. Perhaps; but to jump straight from the Wall down to the era of glasnost in a single bound in the epilogue is a bit much.Also strange to me was their description of Beria's fall for advocating the de-socialization of the GDR and German reunification as a neutral buffer zone. He not only advocated this - he began to directly implement it. Why this should mean his failure was conditioned on the East German citizens' rejection of this process is an odd conclusion. If they so hated the GDR regime; as the authors maintain; wouldn't the East German people have welcomed its "reform?" But the authors' assertion that Beria was naive to believe he could single-handedly decree a reversal of Kremlin German policy is on the mark: the KGB chieftan underestimated the value his own agency - and the Soviet military - placed on their allied German regime for regional security. To abandon it; even to neutralism; was to undermine the entire postwar edifice. The Wall was therefore the last-ditch effort to make the division irreversible.Gorbachev; as they state in the epilogue; repeated Beria's mistake; leading to the disastrous results for Moscow that we know so well. All of which harks back to the conclusion the Kremlin was "right" in deposing Beria: a rollback in Berlin would have been an irreparable breach with Bloc-wide reverberations. The value of Berlin as the linchpin of the Cold War; unmoored by its removal; was graphically validated.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy GrzesiekA great book detailing the beginning of the Cold War.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy CustomerA very well researched and written book about intelligence activities in Berlin before the Wall was built.
