The Warsaw Ghetto is about in Warsaw ( concentration camp ) they put these people in a small room called gas chambers and eventually they all would die. In Warsaw this couple was apart of Warsaw and they were sentenced to death. Warsaw is a really bad place because all these Jews were in a really small area and they had to fit 8 people in a real small bed and they were all really close together. In Warsaw some people had to watch thrie best friend,neighbor,brother,sister,Mom or Dad die. Warsaw was a really bad place and it wasn't the worst concentration camp.

There is no pretense that this book or the film were objective. There is no telling of the tale from the other side. There is no argument. No walk down the Blvd of the Rigtheous Gentile. No understanding of the meaning of Nazi Death warrants issued against those brave souls who aided Jews. This film and book may be the most vicious Polish joke of all. And perhaps because of what bigotry begats, the most vicious Jewish joke also.

Sigmund Gorson, a Polish Jew, has written an expose of the numerous historical inaccuracies in the film Shoah. Gorson's article can be found in the library of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, CT. Among other things, Gorson points out that: 1) Two million Polish Christians were also murdered by the German Nazis during the Holocaust, 2) The Warsaw Ghetto uprising had far more extensive supply of arms by the Polish underground than the token one-gun shown in the movie, 3) The scene where uniformed Polish soldiers shot Jewish women and children is a vicious lie, 4) Overall, more Christians than Jews perished in the hands of the German and Austrian Nazis, 5) True instances of Polish collaboration with the Germans against the Jews were very rare, and were punished by death by the Polish underground, etc. So for those who think that Shoah presents gospel truth, I would advise them to read Gorson.

Lanzmann did not get it right, and I wonder why. He depicts the Jewish ghettoes as guarded by Polish-collaborator police. But this is not the way it usually happened: In the vast majority of cases, the ghettoes were guarded by Jewish collaborators--the Judenrate. It was the Judenrate which played the major role in sealing off the ghettoes, preventing Jews from escaping, and even killing those who did try to escape.

This book gave the reader no information abot the cluture and History. I would not recomend this book to any one!!!

While Lukowski's work is not easy to get through, being rather dense, Liberty's Folly is the richest and most exhaustive analysis of 18th century Polish society available in English. Lukowski has drawn upon a large range of sources to produce a description of 18th century Polish society at every level- from the nobility through the townspeople to the peasantry. The second part of the book constitues a handy summary of Polish chronological history in the 18th century. The patient reader is rewarded with a social historical explanation for a (once) great nation's demise: the tragic combination of the domination of Poland by the nobility, a weak urban class, and an enserfed peasantry.

This book seems to be to be a mock-up that accidentally got bound and sold before it had a chance to be edited by either the author or the publisher. It is filled with typos--English, not Polish, which I am not qualified to judge; contradictory dates; phrases, such as "Golden Freedoms," repeated but never explained; map borders overlaid on one another so it is impossible to see what's going on; legends missing on the maps. As a result, I am leery of its historical and geographical accuracy too, and feel I will have to double and triple check it against other sources before I can trust it.

From my experience, it has been very hard to get a good Polish history text. However, in this case, Pogonowski comes up with a very helpful format by providing some historical text followed by numerous large maps showing that historical activity. This book is very useful if you are reading accounts of Polish history -- or even a Sienkiewicz novel -- and need to see the CONTEMPORARY map so that you can associate the history or story with the ever-changing map of Poland and the Polish Commonwealth. - I like what the author did. It's very useful. And I recommend the book highly as an auxiliary reading tool.

I purchased the hard bound edition ..., so sure that I would really love this one, sucker for beautiful descriptive language that I am. You know what? For the first 2/3 of the novel I did. I ooohed and awed over the prose and description and felt I was really getting a glimpse of a 1930s Jewish/Polish town not long before it's demise. ... The people and life represented in this novel by Szewc are cardboard, pasteboard cutouts, shadows really of a literary craving for prizes and artistic recognition. There is no reality recovered or even imagined here, a fiction grounded in pretension. There is no one on the roofs looking down. We are all right down here struggling along, laughing, crying, being the Earthlings we are. Where is the real humor and human pathos in this book? The crying shame of this book is that not only is nothing recovered from any 1930s Jewish/Polish town, but you feel whatever was there is more lost now because an imposter is in the wings and might be taken for a glimpse of a reality that was. Is this author alone in this? No, sadly many novels these days cry out from between their covers: "Whitbread, Booker, Look, Look at me I am ART!" I apologize to all those 1930s Jewish/Polish town folks who had real lives, whose hearts beat for a time on this planet as mine does now, no we are not fooled. This novel is no glimpse of you. We don't know you maybe we never will, you were real and this literary ambition, well, someone restrain me, is not.

The intent of this beautifully written, poetic book is to capture a day in the life of a village. While there is wonderful use of symbolism, the book ultimately fails on two counts. First, there is no reason for the selection of whose lives to follow through the day. Second, the narrator vasillated between omniscient (even knowing dreams and memories) to limited only is visible. When limited, the narrator engages in speculation and philosophic reflection.

This has an author worth watching, but as a novel it is an interesting, beautiful failure.

This is a beautifully realized account of a day in the life of a small town in eastern Poland in the early 1930s. Szewc has an eye like that of Proust. Details are lovingly recorded, all in an effort to preserve the day-to-day--a day-to-day that will be destroyed, one might add, during the Holocaust. The book is also beautifully translated.

Cooper has strung together a string of selective facts and quasi-facts, with the obvious intention of creating anti-Polish feelings in the reader who is unfamiliar with the full scope of events in Polish-Jewish history. He tells, for instance, of the decades-old boycott of Jewish businesses in prewar Poland without mentioning at least the possibility that this was provoked by Jewish businesses banding together to put Polish gentiles out of business. He mentions the numerus clausus, at Polish universities, without considering that, using today's parlance, one group's numerous clausus is another group's affirmative action (in this case, getting more Polish gentiles into traditionally Jewish-dominated fields such as law, medicine, finance, etc.).

Cooper focuses on the szmalcowniki (blackmailers) who denounced Jews without also noting that they also betrayed Polish gentiles to the occupying Germans. He dwells on Polish collaborators' preventing more Jews from being saved with hardly a word said about the Jewish collaborators--the Judenrate. It was members of the Judenrate who played the main role in sealing off the ghettos, murdering the fellow Jews who tried to escape or who did escape, and discouraging further escapes (and revolts) by spreading untrue assurances about the safety of the Jews in German hands. (For an extensive and balanced account of BOTH Polish and Jewish collaboration, see Piotrowski: POLAND'S HOLOCAUST).

Cooper half-acknowledges the fact that many Jews were Communists, but then gives the familiar rationalization that they did so only to protect themselves from the Nazis. But this will not wash: Extensive Jewish involvement in Communism, which provoked Polish antagonism, long preceded the Nazis and continued long after their defeat. In fact, Cooper (p. 219) later gives the store away by noting that many Communist leaders were Jews.

Cooper's ignorance of the basic conditions under German-occupied Poland is nothing short of astounding. For instance, he tries to deflect charges of Jewish passivity by alleging that the Polish gentiles were even more passive. Nothing could be further from the truth. When, for instance, the Germans began a campaign to uproot large numbers of Poles from the Zamosc region in 1942, sending them to concentration camps, and replacing them with German settlers. The Polish peasants vowed: "We won't be taken as you took the Jews!" and began a guerrilla war. Despite the brutality of German reprisals, the Germans suffered so many losses that they called off the operation until after they won the war, which of course never happened. Cooper's rehash of charges that the Polish underground did not do much to assist the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 ignores, among other things, the fact that guerilla actions were generally expected to be locally-sufficient. Thus, for instance, Polish gentiles living in eastern Poland had to form their own defenses against murderous Ukrainian nationalists. They did not expect, and generally did not receive, substantive assistance from Polish-gentile guerilla groups located in the western part of German-occupied Poland. Cooper notes that Jews were usually not accepted into Polish guerilla organizations because their physiogamy gave them away, and insists that this proves that Poles were prone to turn Jews in. Yes, as if Germans were incapable of recognizing Jews by their features!

Space limitations forbid discussion of many more errors and omissions of inconvenient facts by Cooper. Other facts listed by Cooper can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, Cooper estimates that only 2% of the Polish population was involved in rescuing and hiding Jews, and uses this to "prove" Polish anti-Semitism. But, considering that the death penalty was given by the Germans for assisting Jews, and that heroism must by nature be exceptional, one could argue that 2% is a very high percentage.

In conclusion, both Polish anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Polonism deserve long-overdue deaths. Unfortunately, this will not happen as long as inflammatory and inaccurate books like Cooper's are published and passed off as fact.

This book offers nothing new. The author seems to forget, in his discussion of Polish anti-Semitism, that there has hardly been any nation on Earth where Jews were particularly liked, and where peoples of different cultures lived amiably. The umistakeable extensive Jewish involvement in Communism is also a fact that is insufficiently developed in terms of the provocation of Polish anti-Semitism. As for contemporary anti-Jewish feelings in Poland, Cooper does not seem to understand how offensive many Poles find it to be told that the murder of 6 million Jews by the Germans be immortalized, while the murder of 3 million Polish gentiles by the Germans be marginalized. Despite past Polish-Jewish tensions, Jews had it better in Poland, over the long haul, than just about anywhere else. No wonder that 80% of the world's Jews had at one time lived in Poland. And, despite the frictions and mutual prejudices, Polish society allowed the Jews, at 10% of the population, to acquire over 40% of Poland's wealth. Cooper fails to appreciate the fact that charges about Poles not doing enough to assist the Jews during the German occupation and Holocaust fail to take into account the wartime conditions--which included not only the death penalty for any Pole who assisted the Jews, but also the destruction of entire villages by the Germans in reprisal for ANY single Pole who assisted the Jews. In spite of this, more Poles are honored at Yad Vashem for hiding Jews than members of any other nationality.

Dr Cooper has compiled an extraordinary case whereby he claims that Poland was and is one of the most (if not the most) anti-Semitic countries in the world. Dr Cooper begins with a section detailing anti-Semitism in Poland before, during and after World War II. He puts forward the thesis that most Poles did nothing to assist the Jews in WWII, and instead were actively involved in collaborating with the Nazis by locating Jews in hiding and blowing their cover. This is quite a serious charge, and Dr Cooper seems to do his homework quite well. In fact he refers to an enormous number of books, newspaper articles, documents and oral evidence. Which brings me to an important point. A substantial amount of evidence presented in his thesis is obtained from personal experience and interviews with holocaust survivors. He himself admits that oral accounts may easily be modified and distorted over time. Nonetheless he insists that his own recollections and those of other survivors are relevant to his case.

From the very beginning of his book, it seems that Cooper has a personal bone to pick with the Poles. He relates many stories of his encounters with anti-Semitic poles that are portrayed as being equivalent to the Nazis. In fact almost 90% of his book is dedicated to putting forward evidence that incriminates Poles, whereas bits and pieces throughout the text refer to the very infrequent cases of "good" Poles. To be fair to Dr Cooper, he does devote one chapter to Poles that were commended for bravery and for saving a countless number of Jews (Poles are commended for saving the 2nd highest number of Jews in Europe). BUT...and there is a BIG BUT, he STILL picks fault in those Poles that risked their lives to save Jews. He speculates that many Poles were "in it for the money". Personally I believe that a little bit of compensation for risking one's own life is a small price to pay for an act of heroism. It is evident that Cooper's personal experiences have soured him to the extent that he is unable to present an objective and unbiased look at the Polish-Jewish situation. Furthermore, for most Jews, this book will be a "confirmation" of all the things that they have heard about or speculated on with regards to Polish-Jewish relations. In fact, due to the negative nature of this book it seems Cooper has gone a step in the wrong direction with regards to Polish-Jewish reconciliation. Having said all this, I still believe that the atrocities he has mentioned, such as the horrendous Pogrom at Kielce, definitely prove that many uneducated Poles were anti-Semitic, however on the other hand there were many brave and righteous Poles that should be acknowledged with greater vigor. All in all, Cooper's book is very powerful and is excellent reading even if it is quite biased.

This slim volume consists of six essays, one on the historiography of the Second Polish Republic, two on the post-independence strife, one on treatment of ethnic minorities, one on freedom of the press in Poland and one on Poland's defence preparations in 1939. The subjects are narrow and they are discussed in an apologetic manner on behalf of the conservative authoritarian leaders who ruled Poland during the twenties and thirties. The book is representative of a larger problem in Central European historiography. Historians of France, Germany, Italy, Russia, or Spain will recognize that these countries are often divided by class, ethnicity, religion, region, political persuasion and a large number of other factors. People who are not particularly sympathetic to these countries will still study them because they are intrinsically important. There is a certain expectation that historians will learn foreign languages, and historians will learn Italian, French, German or Russian without necessarily being enamoured of the nationality's government.

By contrast people who study Poland are likely to be highly sympathetic to Poland and are likely to study under Polish emigre scholars. The problem that arises is that many of these scholars are sympathetic to an authoritarian regime. And no matter how better the Second Polish republic may been compared to the Postwar Communist regime, support for authoritarianism does not encourage the critical approach needed to study history. It also means that one is studying under scholars who are not only very conservative, but are also unimaginative historically. The result is that they will ignore every trend that has revolutionized history over the past forty years. Gender, class, the revolution in intellectual history, the whole complex history of nationality; all ignored in a narrow and apologetic concentration on diplomatic and political history.

The result of this can be best seen in Stachura's essay on National Minorities. Stachura argues that if there was conflict between the government and the minorities, it was all the latter's fault. In particular he says How does he go about this? He does so by self-contradiction, omission, and question begging. At one point he claims that the Jews isolated themselves from Polish society, at another he claims they dominated many leading professions. He does not mention the prominent Polish cardinal who before 1939 linked the Jews to prostitution and white slavery (see Arno Mayer's Why the Heavens did not Darken). He does not mention the post 1945 pogrom in Kielce. And he does not mention General Sikorski's January 1942 meeting with Anthony Eden in which the General suggested to Eden that "It is quite impossible...for Poland to continue to maintain 3.5 million Jews after the war." (see Anita Prazmowska, Britain and Poland, 1939-1943: the Betrayed Ally at 122). He makes much of Jewish sympathies to Communism, although such support was electorally insignificant before 1939 and was dwarfed by Belorussian support. The most astonishing passage in Stachura's account occurs on page 75. He challenges the conduct of Zionist leader Yitshak Gruenbaum in the following way: "The destructive nature of Gruenbaum's creation was revealed all too starkly in December 1922, when it tipped the balance of botes in the presidential election in favour of the leftist candidate Gabriel Narutowicz, who was immediately stigmatized by the Right as a `Jewish president' and assasinated a few days later by an ultra-Nationalist. The ensuing poisonous atmosphere in Polish political life, which threatened to break out into civil war, owed much, therefore, to the nefarious activity of Gruenbaum and his fellow Zionists..." One is struck by the sheer non-sequitur, in which it is the exercise of one's democratic rights, and not the foul political motiviated assassination, that is blamed for undermining civic harmony. But it is all of a piece with an author who could write of Gruenbaum that "He exploited press freedom to mount his propaganda attacks," a phrasing more suitable to Franco and Pinochet than of a scholar published by St. Martin's Press.

Rather than reading Andrzej Suchcitz's indulgent essay on Poland's defence preparations, one should read A. Prazmowska's tougher Britian, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939. She points out that the amazingly complacent attitude the British had on the vital question of getting Soviet aid, while the attitude of the Poles "was not merely one of obduracy but even more so of unrelieved reality." All in all we have not progressed beyond Antony Polonsky's study, now more than a quarter-century old.

A distinguished historian certainly has something to say, but what does a boy who left Poland at the age of 10 in 1930 have to say about Jewish life in inter-war Poland. Obviously not much. But Prof. Hamerow puts into the mouth or pen of a ten-year old the thoughts of a mature historian in his eighties. A more vain mismatch can hardly be imagined.

Some books are so bad that the publishers should pay the readers to read them. This book is not quite as bad as reading Henry Kissinger in his 19th century diplomatic history. Based on the description, one expects to encounter the arrival of modernity in the Eastern European region at a time of tremendous unrest, when oppotunities were missed to develop modern states. The reader expects a book on this time period to provide adequate explanations for missed opportunities. One would expect, for example, to encounter an explanation for the institutional failure of tsarist rule to accommodate liberal thinking. It is probably too much to expect this author, coming from a backwater of academia, to approach the magnificent works of historians like Morton, who covers Vienna and Austria at the same time. Even worse, Blobaum de-emphasizes the importance of the Catholic and Orthodox religions as counterweights to the programme of modernity. Instead, Blobaum travels down that much visited road of Jewish culture and relations and nascent Marxist Leninism. To get a better picture than Blobaum provides of this approach go to Blockbuster and rent Yentle or maybe Fiddler on the Roof. This books is loaded with names, as though the author tried to drop every conceivable minor figure on the political scene, in hopes their descendants would buy it. This book is too typical and manages to be more of a chronicle, rather than a successful snapshot of society and culture in Eastern Europe at this crucial juncture. This book does have some value to people who are deeply immersed in gathering trivia or Polish and Russian genealogy.

This Mr. Krakowski was a political officer responsible for communist political propaganda in Polish People's Army until 1966. His wife worked in KC PZPR (Central Comity of Polish Communist party.) He was a part of of the most brutal and inhumane regimes that ruled Poland after World War II. Among his friends were human beasts like Jakub Berman, Jozef Rozanski-Glodberg, Jozef Swiatlo-Fleichfarb, Helena Wolinska, and Salomon Morel. I am not surprised that person who actively participated in extermination of the best Polish patriots wrote a book that has no historical value. It not even a fiction! It is propaganda in its worst!

Although much of the material in this book appears to be of historical value, some of it is clearly contrary to historical facts and appears to reflect a Polonophobic prejudice on the part of author. For instance, the murder of Jews hiding from the Germans by members of the Polish guerrillas is mentioned, but not the fact that these murderers were court-martialed by the Polish underground and executed. More serious is Krakowski's outright misrepresentation of Polish underground leader Bor Komorowski's order for Polish guerrillas (the AK) to kill bandits. Krakowski insinuates that this was a veiled order to kill Jews in hiding. There is not a shred of evidence to support Krakowski's rather scurrilous charge. To the contrary: Anyone who actually lived in the Polish countryside during the German occupation will testify to the fact that bands of bandits, both Jewish and Polish-gentile, roved the countryside, robbing and sometimes killing Polish farmers. The Polish guerrillas (AK) took it upon themselves to protect the Polish rural population in this regard.