What do you think?
Rate this book
Unerwünschte Bücher zum Faschismus #3
Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto: The Stars Bear Witness
Born in a small town outside of Warsaw in 1889, Bernard Goldstein joined the Jewish labor organization, the Bund, at age 16 and dedicated his life to organizing workers and resisting tyranny. Goldstein spent time in prisons from Warsaw to Siberia, took part in the Russian Revolution and was a respected organizer within the vibrant labor movement in independent Poland.
In 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Poland and establishment of the Jewish Ghetto, Goldstein and the Bund went underground—organizing housing, food and clothing within the ghetto; communicating with the West for support; and developing a secret armed force. Smuggled out of the ghetto just before the Jewish militia’s heroic last stand, Goldstein assisted in procuring guns to aid those within the ghetto’s walls and aided in the fight to free Warsaw. After the liberation of Poland, Goldstein emigrated to America, where he penned this account of his five-and-a-half years within the Warsaw ghetto and his brave comrades who resisted to the end. His surprisingly modest and frank depiction of a community under siege at a time when the world chose not to intervene is enlightening, devastating and ultimately inspiring.
“His active leadership before the war and his position in the Jewish underground during it qualify him as the chronicler of the last hours of Warsaw’s Jews. Out of the tortured memories of those five-and-a-half years, he has brought forth the picture with all its shadings—the good with the bad, the cowardly with the heroic, the disgraceful with the glorious. This is his valedictory, his final service to the Jews of Warsaw.”—Leonard Shatzkin
In 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Poland and establishment of the Jewish Ghetto, Goldstein and the Bund went underground—organizing housing, food and clothing within the ghetto; communicating with the West for support; and developing a secret armed force. Smuggled out of the ghetto just before the Jewish militia’s heroic last stand, Goldstein assisted in procuring guns to aid those within the ghetto’s walls and aided in the fight to free Warsaw. After the liberation of Poland, Goldstein emigrated to America, where he penned this account of his five-and-a-half years within the Warsaw ghetto and his brave comrades who resisted to the end. His surprisingly modest and frank depiction of a community under siege at a time when the world chose not to intervene is enlightening, devastating and ultimately inspiring.
“His active leadership before the war and his position in the Jewish underground during it qualify him as the chronicler of the last hours of Warsaw’s Jews. Out of the tortured memories of those five-and-a-half years, he has brought forth the picture with all its shadings—the good with the bad, the cowardly with the heroic, the disgraceful with the glorious. This is his valedictory, his final service to the Jews of Warsaw.”—Leonard Shatzkin
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Bernard Goldstein
3 booksBernard Goldstein (1889–1959), sometimes called "Comrade Bernard", was a Jewish Polish socialist, union organizer, and leader of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland prior to World War II. During the war, he was active in the Warsaw Ghetto, helping smuggle in arms in preparation for the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
After Poland's liberation from German occupation, he emigrated to the United States
After Poland's liberation from German occupation, he emigrated to the United States
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 25, 2018
I've dedicated the last couple of months to reading somewhat exhaustively (obsessively, my wife says!) about life in the Warsaw Ghetto. I've read a couple of diaries; this however is a memoir written many years after the war. Goldstein was a member of the socialist Bund party, opposed to the Zionists in that they believed assimilation into European cultures was the way forward. He participated in the Uprising and eventually escaped through the sewers. Thus he provides insights on the complete existence of the Warsaw Ghetto. It's an incredibly powerful book and probably perfect for anyone who has little knowledge of what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto from an insider's perspective.
June 5, 2007
It took me a few days to write this review after I finished "Five Years In The Warsaw Ghetto" by Bernard Goldstein. In a day where there's much wrong with our world, you can't help but be depressed when reading of people in the past that's ideals were utterly crushed by the might of state power. Goldstein was a Jewish socialist organizer in the trade unions of Warsaw, and lost his entire community to the Nazi plan of aus rotten of the Polish Jews. Its story, a re-release of a memoir put out in the 1950s when the Holocaust was fresh in the world's mind, leaves you with three things.
First, it is a tragedy, one of where Bernard Goldstein spent his entire life fighting for justice, as a socialist activist and organizer amongst Polish workers and Jews; he actively fought fascism from rising in Poland, but was nearly powerless to stop as the tanks rolled into Warsaw. Throughout the five years, he watched as half a million Jews were reduced to a little more than 70,000, and as his beloved Warsaw was utterly destroyed by the Nazis, and than the Socialist resister survivors were rounded up and either imprisoned or executed by the Soviets.
Second, it is a story of hope. Throughout the entire occupation, Goldstein never rested nor never gave up; reminding the reader of the old phrase "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." When the Nazis set up the Ghetto, he urged, from the underground press, to resist it and not to trust the Jewish collaborators whom the Gestapo put into power to rule over the ghetto. When deportations started, his organization tried to manufacture fake documents to as many people as possible marked for liquidation as good workers. When it became clear the Nazis were planning to kill everyone, Goldstein helped organize the uprising which nearly succeeded in defeating the Nazis except for a dearth of supplies. Escaping the Ghetto, Goldstein joins the Polish resistance which stages a second city-wide uprising two years later, which only failed because the approaching Soviet army refused to help it, since Stalin wanted no rivals in his puppet government.
Third, it is a story of courage to fight for what is right. Throughout the story, Goldstein remains resolute that the Nazis would be defeated eventually, and used all of his cunning, strength, and organizing skill to achieve it. People who compromised themselves in order to survive in this story usually did not, such as Jewish Gestapo agents, who became such to protect themselves from death camps, but instead were assassinated by vengeful Jews when the uprisings erupted. Goldstein, the biggest rebel of them all, survives the holocaust of his people and his city, though he has to flee when the Soviets begin arresting the radicals of the nation.
Goldstein's message should be for us today, in these difficult times, to never give up, and never stand down, no matter how mighty your foes are nor how much the odds are stacked against you and what you hold dear. Nothing, not the state, nor the worst of tyrants and human hatred, can crush the thoughts and hope for a better world. If Goldstein can survive it, so can we.
First, it is a tragedy, one of where Bernard Goldstein spent his entire life fighting for justice, as a socialist activist and organizer amongst Polish workers and Jews; he actively fought fascism from rising in Poland, but was nearly powerless to stop as the tanks rolled into Warsaw. Throughout the five years, he watched as half a million Jews were reduced to a little more than 70,000, and as his beloved Warsaw was utterly destroyed by the Nazis, and than the Socialist resister survivors were rounded up and either imprisoned or executed by the Soviets.
Second, it is a story of hope. Throughout the entire occupation, Goldstein never rested nor never gave up; reminding the reader of the old phrase "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees." When the Nazis set up the Ghetto, he urged, from the underground press, to resist it and not to trust the Jewish collaborators whom the Gestapo put into power to rule over the ghetto. When deportations started, his organization tried to manufacture fake documents to as many people as possible marked for liquidation as good workers. When it became clear the Nazis were planning to kill everyone, Goldstein helped organize the uprising which nearly succeeded in defeating the Nazis except for a dearth of supplies. Escaping the Ghetto, Goldstein joins the Polish resistance which stages a second city-wide uprising two years later, which only failed because the approaching Soviet army refused to help it, since Stalin wanted no rivals in his puppet government.
Third, it is a story of courage to fight for what is right. Throughout the story, Goldstein remains resolute that the Nazis would be defeated eventually, and used all of his cunning, strength, and organizing skill to achieve it. People who compromised themselves in order to survive in this story usually did not, such as Jewish Gestapo agents, who became such to protect themselves from death camps, but instead were assassinated by vengeful Jews when the uprisings erupted. Goldstein, the biggest rebel of them all, survives the holocaust of his people and his city, though he has to flee when the Soviets begin arresting the radicals of the nation.
Goldstein's message should be for us today, in these difficult times, to never give up, and never stand down, no matter how mighty your foes are nor how much the odds are stacked against you and what you hold dear. Nothing, not the state, nor the worst of tyrants and human hatred, can crush the thoughts and hope for a better world. If Goldstein can survive it, so can we.
February 28, 2017
I bought this book because Norman Finkelstein mentioned it in an article about the late, great Raul Hilberg. The specific passage dealt with Lucy Dawidowicz, whom Finkelstein and Hilberg despised because she depicted the victims of the Nazi genocide in an all-too-romantic view and refused to acknowledge any corruption and moral decay in the Jewish camp.
This book has it all. The heroic and the petty, the inspiring and the depressing, the brave and the cowardly. In fact, there is one page where the author chastises himself for not being inside the ghetto during the uprising, fighting with his comrades, dying with them. He was right next to it, it would have been easy to throw himself into the suicidal struggle. It would have been easy to commit suicide by attacking the guards at Umschlagplatz. Perhaps he could have taken one or two with him. He pushed himself into survival, maybe he even debased himself into survival.
However, it would also have been easy for him to aggrandise his figure in his account. After all, his comrades and friends were dead, no one could have disputed his claims. He could have exaggerated his role while keeping a mantle of false modesty. But he never presents himself as a hero. It's others who speak about him as of a legend. In the book, there's no account of himself doing anything otherwordly. The only thing that strikes the reader as extraordinary is his luck in his several narrow escapes. You get the idea that, if he had been told "right" instead of "left", he would have walked into the gas chamber like the others, despite his belligerent rhetoric in the first days of the ghetto, despite his tried and tested value as a resistance fighter for decades. This honesty makes me trust the man. His appalling sense of loss is painful to read at the end. Not just his family or friends or comrades - his whole WORLD, Polish jewry, was annihilated around him. Still, a living dead in a foreign country, he gathered the strength to give the world a very important testimony and a message of brotherhood and defiance.
If there is one thing that one can extract from these accounts is the survivor motto: "never again". An extraordinary book like this lies forgotten because it tells us things we don't want to hear. It doesn't regale us with a good vs. bad fairy tale in which good somehow wins (even if it's just a moral victory!) and we, the good, can go to sleep. As we see Syrian refugees fleeing from an all-consuming war that was instigated precisely by the same Europe that denies them entry, we have to be reminded of all the unnecessary suffering, of all the petty hatred, of the cowardly collaboration, of the callous indifference. We cannot say "oh, it was just those crazy nazis", "it was the eternal hatred of Jews", "it is evil that cannot be comprehended". We cannot dwell on the black and white images, we cannot place history outside history, we cannot hold the genocide as a religious phenomenon, not to be touched or analysed or compared. We must truly learn the lessons and tell ourselves "never again".
This book has it all. The heroic and the petty, the inspiring and the depressing, the brave and the cowardly. In fact, there is one page where the author chastises himself for not being inside the ghetto during the uprising, fighting with his comrades, dying with them. He was right next to it, it would have been easy to throw himself into the suicidal struggle. It would have been easy to commit suicide by attacking the guards at Umschlagplatz. Perhaps he could have taken one or two with him. He pushed himself into survival, maybe he even debased himself into survival.
However, it would also have been easy for him to aggrandise his figure in his account. After all, his comrades and friends were dead, no one could have disputed his claims. He could have exaggerated his role while keeping a mantle of false modesty. But he never presents himself as a hero. It's others who speak about him as of a legend. In the book, there's no account of himself doing anything otherwordly. The only thing that strikes the reader as extraordinary is his luck in his several narrow escapes. You get the idea that, if he had been told "right" instead of "left", he would have walked into the gas chamber like the others, despite his belligerent rhetoric in the first days of the ghetto, despite his tried and tested value as a resistance fighter for decades. This honesty makes me trust the man. His appalling sense of loss is painful to read at the end. Not just his family or friends or comrades - his whole WORLD, Polish jewry, was annihilated around him. Still, a living dead in a foreign country, he gathered the strength to give the world a very important testimony and a message of brotherhood and defiance.
If there is one thing that one can extract from these accounts is the survivor motto: "never again". An extraordinary book like this lies forgotten because it tells us things we don't want to hear. It doesn't regale us with a good vs. bad fairy tale in which good somehow wins (even if it's just a moral victory!) and we, the good, can go to sleep. As we see Syrian refugees fleeing from an all-consuming war that was instigated precisely by the same Europe that denies them entry, we have to be reminded of all the unnecessary suffering, of all the petty hatred, of the cowardly collaboration, of the callous indifference. We cannot say "oh, it was just those crazy nazis", "it was the eternal hatred of Jews", "it is evil that cannot be comprehended". We cannot dwell on the black and white images, we cannot place history outside history, we cannot hold the genocide as a religious phenomenon, not to be touched or analysed or compared. We must truly learn the lessons and tell ourselves "never again".
March 12, 2008
This book is intense and amazing and inspiring and heartbreaking.
When I was younger I was obsessed with reading about the Holocaust. Retrospectively, I think many of the stories I read focused on the gentiles who helped out Jews, rather than on Jewish resistance itself. Goldstein, a leader in the Bund (the Jewish union), carefully outlines the ways in which Jews fought back and helped each other during the five years in the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation.
Today a common theme in Jewish discourse, especially when discussing Israel, is that we will never again be led passively to our slaughter. Goldstein's book carefully outlines the thinking behind the periods that Jews did not physically resist, and documents how that thinking began to change ultimately leading to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He also speaks to the tough decisions people had to make around assimilation and "passing."
The stories in the book are, by necessity, haunting. There are few happy endings. Goldstein notes that those who "survived," himself included, did so with little hope. He does not camouflage the harshness of the end of the war in false celebrations of victory. He is honest about the anti-semitism that remained in Poland, the violence that pervaded pretty much everything, and the desire for pure revenge amongst the remaining Jews.
Separate from painting a vivid picture of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance, the book to me served as a reminder of how Israel came to be. To be clear, Goldstein is not a Zionist. When he mentions people emigrating to what is now "Israel," he refers to the land as "Palestine." He talks about Zionists as a political party, rather than as Zionism as something inherent to Jewish identity. His story ends a few years before the founding of Israel.
To me though, as a Jewish activist devoted to Palestine solidarity work, the book struck a chord, usefully complicating the work that I do. I've spent countless hours pondering how we as a people who have been so violently persecuted throughout history could turn around and so clearly oppress another group of people. 750,000 refugees were created in the founding of Israel and over 500 villages destroyed. This book to me is a reminder and revelation of people's mindset immediately following the Holocaust. Though I steadfastly insist that the Holocaust does not excuse Israel's acts of violence and dispossession, and that we as a people must move on from 60 years of sitting shiva, the book does put a more human face on the perpetrators of Al-Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe.
When I was younger I was obsessed with reading about the Holocaust. Retrospectively, I think many of the stories I read focused on the gentiles who helped out Jews, rather than on Jewish resistance itself. Goldstein, a leader in the Bund (the Jewish union), carefully outlines the ways in which Jews fought back and helped each other during the five years in the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation.
Today a common theme in Jewish discourse, especially when discussing Israel, is that we will never again be led passively to our slaughter. Goldstein's book carefully outlines the thinking behind the periods that Jews did not physically resist, and documents how that thinking began to change ultimately leading to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He also speaks to the tough decisions people had to make around assimilation and "passing."
The stories in the book are, by necessity, haunting. There are few happy endings. Goldstein notes that those who "survived," himself included, did so with little hope. He does not camouflage the harshness of the end of the war in false celebrations of victory. He is honest about the anti-semitism that remained in Poland, the violence that pervaded pretty much everything, and the desire for pure revenge amongst the remaining Jews.
Separate from painting a vivid picture of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance, the book to me served as a reminder of how Israel came to be. To be clear, Goldstein is not a Zionist. When he mentions people emigrating to what is now "Israel," he refers to the land as "Palestine." He talks about Zionists as a political party, rather than as Zionism as something inherent to Jewish identity. His story ends a few years before the founding of Israel.
To me though, as a Jewish activist devoted to Palestine solidarity work, the book struck a chord, usefully complicating the work that I do. I've spent countless hours pondering how we as a people who have been so violently persecuted throughout history could turn around and so clearly oppress another group of people. 750,000 refugees were created in the founding of Israel and over 500 villages destroyed. This book to me is a reminder and revelation of people's mindset immediately following the Holocaust. Though I steadfastly insist that the Holocaust does not excuse Israel's acts of violence and dispossession, and that we as a people must move on from 60 years of sitting shiva, the book does put a more human face on the perpetrators of Al-Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe.
April 2, 2016
This is an amazing book. Bernard Goldstein was a humanist, a socialist, and an internationalist. He was a leading member of the social-democratic Jewish Bund party in Warsaw and was responsible for self-defense units of that organization. After WWII started, Goldstein escaped Warsaw, but, like some other leading Bund activists, went back to the city to participate in its defense and remained since the party wished some of its leading activists to assist with organizing the Jewish population in the hard times of the occupation. Goldstein spent the war in the Warsaw ghetto, doing his best to assist others and to ensure the party operations there. He was one of the organizers of the uprising, though had to escape the ghetto before it started in order to acquire weapons, and was not able to join the fighters. He did much to assist the survivors after the rebellion. Later, he took part in the Warsaw rebellion.
As a Bund member, Goldstein worked with Polish socialists and did his best to gain their help for the ghetto. For him, they are his comrades in struggle. Thus he emphasized their heroism in trying to help the Jews, while also his bitter disappointment when they were reluctant to do so. While his conduct was unquestioningly heroic, he experienced a survival guilt and sadness due to inability to revive the Jewish life in Poland after the war due to both antisemitism and the imposition of a Soviet-style regime.
Beyond anything else, Goldstein tells a story of everyday heroism of his comrades, who retained their commitment to their principles and tried to help the population even while life became impossible. There was something hard and stubborn about these people which prevented them from giving up or concentrating on their own survival. I suppose this is the only way to fight for humanist principles - this stubborn refusal to give up, no matter what.
As a Bund member, Goldstein worked with Polish socialists and did his best to gain their help for the ghetto. For him, they are his comrades in struggle. Thus he emphasized their heroism in trying to help the Jews, while also his bitter disappointment when they were reluctant to do so. While his conduct was unquestioningly heroic, he experienced a survival guilt and sadness due to inability to revive the Jewish life in Poland after the war due to both antisemitism and the imposition of a Soviet-style regime.
Beyond anything else, Goldstein tells a story of everyday heroism of his comrades, who retained their commitment to their principles and tried to help the population even while life became impossible. There was something hard and stubborn about these people which prevented them from giving up or concentrating on their own survival. I suppose this is the only way to fight for humanist principles - this stubborn refusal to give up, no matter what.
October 24, 2020
Almost everything I've read about the Holocaust present it as a bunch of helpless Jews being led meekly to slaughter; not this book. While still heartbreaking and horrifying, Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto was also inspiring and hopeful. Reading stories of resistance when seemingly all hope is lost helps me to keep going in this mad world. There definitely wasn't a happy ending, but I was left with a proud, thankful feeling.
December 12, 2019
A man who survived five years in the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi invasion of Poland and the clustering of all Jews in the country into a very small area, for obvious easy deportation. The author managed to escape the concentration camps, but that did not make his trials any easier. The author was a well-known figure in pre-WWII Warsaw labor struggles and when the time came to make the ghetto at least semi-livable he worked tirelessly to do so. It is a fascinating read in their attempts to organize and struggle against the Nazi regime.
Now it should be pointed out that the author was a socialist, not a communist. We have a tendency to confuse the two nowadays, but history has shown us (also mentioned in Out of the Night) the socialists do the heavy lifting in organizing and fighting for labor rights, then the communist elements come in and subvert them, eventually changing the organization into a different direction to suit their purposes (as we have seen recently in the atheist organizations), thereby latching on to a popular cause to sneakily promote their own. Goldstein, mentions several of his fellow organizers being shot by communist agents, and several more disappearing into the Lubyanka, after the Russians drove the Nazis out of Poland.
The author describes the actions with a strange distance, keeping all emotions out of it (the quote above being one of the rare exceptions). In fact we learn almost nothing about him, his beliefs, or his background, except where it becomes important to reference it in his recounting. This is the Warsaw Ghetto’s story, as he saw it, not his own. As such it is more technical, and not emotional, as one might expect. This conversely demonstrates the author’s deep depression and anger over the events. He must divorce himself emotionally from the events in order to discuss them.
Strange as this may sound, one of the great stumbling blocks that the resistance found was hope. People clung to the hope that things could not get worse, the propaganda about extermination of the Jews was just bluster. First they came for the weak and infirm, then the unemployed, then whoever they could grab. It wasn’t until the population of 500,000 was whittled down to 40,000 that real resistance popped up.
This resulted in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the fall 1943. This was on the eve of the final attempt by the Nazi’s to clear out the Ghetto for good. There were heavy losses on both sides, but it ultimately ended with the Ghetto destruction and its survivors scattering about the city. This did set the stage for the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which was a general revolt by the remaining inhabitants of the city. The uprising was urged on by the nearby Russian army, who promised to support them, but ultimately failed to do so. This was probably a calculated move on the Soviet’s part, as it had two potential resistors wear themselves down battling each other: The Nazi’s whom they wanted to push out, and the Poles whom they wanted to oppress.
The truly crushing blow comes right at the end of the book. After all the devastation, the author is filthy, dressed in rags, covered in lice, afflicted with dysentery, malnourished and yet must flee. Not due to Nazis, but because of the incoming Russian Communist army and its puppet Polish government. The Communists begin rounding up the Jews again, including anyone with a hand in the previous labor struggle before WWII. He discovers that there is an old death sentence against him by the Polish Communist Party and thus has to flee to save his life.
Now it should be pointed out that the author was a socialist, not a communist. We have a tendency to confuse the two nowadays, but history has shown us (also mentioned in Out of the Night) the socialists do the heavy lifting in organizing and fighting for labor rights, then the communist elements come in and subvert them, eventually changing the organization into a different direction to suit their purposes (as we have seen recently in the atheist organizations), thereby latching on to a popular cause to sneakily promote their own. Goldstein, mentions several of his fellow organizers being shot by communist agents, and several more disappearing into the Lubyanka, after the Russians drove the Nazis out of Poland.
The author describes the actions with a strange distance, keeping all emotions out of it (the quote above being one of the rare exceptions). In fact we learn almost nothing about him, his beliefs, or his background, except where it becomes important to reference it in his recounting. This is the Warsaw Ghetto’s story, as he saw it, not his own. As such it is more technical, and not emotional, as one might expect. This conversely demonstrates the author’s deep depression and anger over the events. He must divorce himself emotionally from the events in order to discuss them.
Strange as this may sound, one of the great stumbling blocks that the resistance found was hope. People clung to the hope that things could not get worse, the propaganda about extermination of the Jews was just bluster. First they came for the weak and infirm, then the unemployed, then whoever they could grab. It wasn’t until the population of 500,000 was whittled down to 40,000 that real resistance popped up.
This resulted in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the fall 1943. This was on the eve of the final attempt by the Nazi’s to clear out the Ghetto for good. There were heavy losses on both sides, but it ultimately ended with the Ghetto destruction and its survivors scattering about the city. This did set the stage for the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which was a general revolt by the remaining inhabitants of the city. The uprising was urged on by the nearby Russian army, who promised to support them, but ultimately failed to do so. This was probably a calculated move on the Soviet’s part, as it had two potential resistors wear themselves down battling each other: The Nazi’s whom they wanted to push out, and the Poles whom they wanted to oppress.
The truly crushing blow comes right at the end of the book. After all the devastation, the author is filthy, dressed in rags, covered in lice, afflicted with dysentery, malnourished and yet must flee. Not due to Nazis, but because of the incoming Russian Communist army and its puppet Polish government. The Communists begin rounding up the Jews again, including anyone with a hand in the previous labor struggle before WWII. He discovers that there is an old death sentence against him by the Polish Communist Party and thus has to flee to save his life.
November 9, 2012
heartbreaking. but a great account from one of the survivors of the warsaw ghetto.
March 9, 2024
This was not an easy read.
Goldstein's account of the Nazi takeover of Poland begins much farther back, with the rise of a new Jewish-Polish identity, steeped in the explosion of new ideas in society, as well as in political action with the formation and rise of the Bund, a leftist political organization steeped in the trade unions and poverty of Jewish ghetto life and the street fighting against far-right Polish nationalist groups as well as in intellectual strife against the mostly reactionary Jewish religious elite. As this new Jewish identity was on the rise, transforming a large swath of the working class in Polish cities, the Second World War came crashing into the country.
Goldstein's tale unfolds like a French "conte cruel." He recounts how the streets and the political underground reacted as the world abandoned the Poles, and the Poles abandoned the Jews. The world of Jewish people shrunk little-by-little until they were completely and literally walled off from society in ghettos. Within the ghettos, Jewish society further stratified into those who had work, those who didn't, those who accepted political power from the Nazis — at first to spare their brethren the indiscriminate brutality of gestapo raids by organizing themselves into work groups, then, slowly and excruciatingly, to avoid being hunted themselves — and those who did or could not. He reveals how the Bund advocated for armed resistance and prepared for it, even as most of the Warsaw ghetto retreated into denial, then self preservation and, finally, existential despair. He recounts how the random attacks solidified into periodic selections, then into formalized round-ups and, finally, into all-out exterminations.
Through it all, Goldstein remains resolute, describing how groups of Jews and some Poles organized themselves into a counterinsurgency, taking greater and greater risks. He talks about how small economies grew to smuggle the bare essentials of life into the ghetto. He describes how small resistances grew, especially among the unionists and radicals accustomed to organizing, finally resulting in an armed but impossible insurrection.
He doesn't shy away from describing the bodies in the streets and the sewers. He paints vivid pictures of dead Jewish men stripped of their pants to reveal their circumcisions before their murder. He recounts Polish indifference and enthusiasm for the attacks and also the bravery of some who sacrificed their lives to help others rather than ride out the terror. Most chilling are his descriptions of the economies that evolved to take advantage of Jewish suffering by methodically blackmailing those who managed to escape the ghetto and hide among non-Jews.
Like the society around him, Goldstein is psychologically stripped layer by layer as he goes from a high-profile organizer to a kind of informal civil servant to a man increasingly on the run. He goes from hiding place to hiding place — apartment to apartment, hidden in secret rooms, then behind walls, under floors and eventually into sewers and, finally, running terrified street to street in an effort to avoid being recognized.
When "liberation" finally arrives, it brings its own terrors, as the Soviets take an increasingly authoritarian role on Polish daily life, eventually subsuming the Bund and all the hard work it had done to maintain its independence, and forcing a withered and weary Goldstein, finally, to flee to Europe and, eventually, the U.S.
It dawns on the reader eventually that the writing this book could not have been pleasant. Like the actions he describes throughout the occupation, Goldstein's writing is another act of bravery in the face of extreme pain and sorrow. And, in that way, another act of extreme courage and a hard-won inspiration.
Goldstein's account of the Nazi takeover of Poland begins much farther back, with the rise of a new Jewish-Polish identity, steeped in the explosion of new ideas in society, as well as in political action with the formation and rise of the Bund, a leftist political organization steeped in the trade unions and poverty of Jewish ghetto life and the street fighting against far-right Polish nationalist groups as well as in intellectual strife against the mostly reactionary Jewish religious elite. As this new Jewish identity was on the rise, transforming a large swath of the working class in Polish cities, the Second World War came crashing into the country.
Goldstein's tale unfolds like a French "conte cruel." He recounts how the streets and the political underground reacted as the world abandoned the Poles, and the Poles abandoned the Jews. The world of Jewish people shrunk little-by-little until they were completely and literally walled off from society in ghettos. Within the ghettos, Jewish society further stratified into those who had work, those who didn't, those who accepted political power from the Nazis — at first to spare their brethren the indiscriminate brutality of gestapo raids by organizing themselves into work groups, then, slowly and excruciatingly, to avoid being hunted themselves — and those who did or could not. He reveals how the Bund advocated for armed resistance and prepared for it, even as most of the Warsaw ghetto retreated into denial, then self preservation and, finally, existential despair. He recounts how the random attacks solidified into periodic selections, then into formalized round-ups and, finally, into all-out exterminations.
Through it all, Goldstein remains resolute, describing how groups of Jews and some Poles organized themselves into a counterinsurgency, taking greater and greater risks. He talks about how small economies grew to smuggle the bare essentials of life into the ghetto. He describes how small resistances grew, especially among the unionists and radicals accustomed to organizing, finally resulting in an armed but impossible insurrection.
He doesn't shy away from describing the bodies in the streets and the sewers. He paints vivid pictures of dead Jewish men stripped of their pants to reveal their circumcisions before their murder. He recounts Polish indifference and enthusiasm for the attacks and also the bravery of some who sacrificed their lives to help others rather than ride out the terror. Most chilling are his descriptions of the economies that evolved to take advantage of Jewish suffering by methodically blackmailing those who managed to escape the ghetto and hide among non-Jews.
Like the society around him, Goldstein is psychologically stripped layer by layer as he goes from a high-profile organizer to a kind of informal civil servant to a man increasingly on the run. He goes from hiding place to hiding place — apartment to apartment, hidden in secret rooms, then behind walls, under floors and eventually into sewers and, finally, running terrified street to street in an effort to avoid being recognized.
When "liberation" finally arrives, it brings its own terrors, as the Soviets take an increasingly authoritarian role on Polish daily life, eventually subsuming the Bund and all the hard work it had done to maintain its independence, and forcing a withered and weary Goldstein, finally, to flee to Europe and, eventually, the U.S.
It dawns on the reader eventually that the writing this book could not have been pleasant. Like the actions he describes throughout the occupation, Goldstein's writing is another act of bravery in the face of extreme pain and sorrow. And, in that way, another act of extreme courage and a hard-won inspiration.
December 12, 2020
This book should be required reading for every American, shit- every person on earth. Fascism is an ever present threat.
Never again? Only if we never forget, we're in danger of doing just that.
Never again? Only if we never forget, we're in danger of doing just that.
July 31, 2022
May their memories be a blessing
The most amazing true story I have ever heard. So much to learn about what it was like to live through one of the darkest periods of history. Long live the Bund!
The most amazing true story I have ever heard. So much to learn about what it was like to live through one of the darkest periods of history. Long live the Bund!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews