I Came Home and There Was No One There: Conversations and Stories about the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Grupińska, Anka.

Taylor-Kucia, Jessica

Series:

Jews of Poland

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (500 p.)

Place of Publication:

Academic Studies Press 2023

Summary:

This book comprises interviews with some of the last surviving veterans of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw ghetto, accompanied by never previously published photographic postcards from a number of ghettoes, and a reconstruction of the only surviving contemporary list of those soldiers that strives to salvage vestiges of their stories from oblivion.The first part of the book, Still Circling, is a collection of interviews with the last surviving soldiers of the Jewish Fighting Organization (OB), which fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The section opens with an interview recorded in 1985 with Marek Edelman, by then the only commander of the OB still alive, and ends with another conversation with him recorded in 2000. The other interviewees included are also OB veteransrank-and-file soldiers, men and women. These veterans relate the stories of their homes and their backgroundssome were Bundists, others from Zionist or religious familiesfollowed by their recollections of how they experienced and remembered the uprising, which provides several unique perspectives of shared episodes. Images include portraits of Grupiskas interlocutors as well as never before published photographs of the ghetto and its surroundings that are reminiscent of postcards. The second part of the book, Rereading the List, is intended to function like a litany of the names of the OB members who fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. This list was compiled by fighters in 1943 and discovered by the author in 2000. Each name is accompanied by a short story about the fightersometimes only a sentence or twoas well as any available photograph of the soldier. The list is followed by a reconstruction of the OB army, which captures its divisions and the places they fought.

ISBN:

979-88-87192-61-1