Description
Book SynopsisAfter sixty years, Kristine Keese is finally able to share the memories of her years spent in the Warsaw Ghetto as a small child. She owes her survival, and that of her young uncle, to the striking resourcefulness of her mother. The story emerges as vividly as if it happened yesterday, full of details that only a child would notice. Although the the events of the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of its victims has been described many times, Keese's story is exceptional, as it is told through the eyes of, not a victim, but a child engaged with her daily reality focused on survival.
Trade ReviewKeese’s self-reflective attempt to understand what was humanly possible has meaning far beyond the particularities of Germans, Jews and Poles during the Second World War. In her story, told with no melodrama and no self-pity, we see the universal through the particular.”— Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History, Yale University“A fine honest memoir...devastation is lodged in the accumulated detail, one of the reasons publications such as this are so important.” — Natasha Lehrer, Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Chapter 1: My Personal War
Chapter 2: 1939: The Clouds of War
Chapter 3: November 1940–July 1942: The Ghetto, First Stages
Chapter 4: The Ghetto, Last Stages
Chapter 5: The End of Safety
Chapter 6: Jasio’s Story and Leaving the Ghetto
Chapter 7: Times of High Anxiety
Chapter 8: August–August 1944: The Warsaw Uprising
Chapter 9: Leaving Warsaw
Chapter 10: Waiting for the War to End
Chapter 11: Spring 1945: Return to the Convent
Chapter 12: Living with Genia in Lodz
Afterword: What is Left???
Illustrations
Index
