Fascinated by the nature of the Jewish identity, Doeblin, the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, a non-practising Jew in Berlin in the 1920s, decided to visit Poland to try to discover his Jewish roots. This book is a record of that journey.

An overview of the history, geography, economy, government, people, and culture of Poland.

Explores the representation of revenge from Classical to early modern literature

In this uproarious memoir and meticulously researched cultural journey, writer Michael Moran keeps company with a gallery of fantastic characters. In chronicling the resurrection of the nation from war and the Holocaust, he paints a portrait of the unknown Poland, one of monumental castles, primeval forests and, of course, the Poles themselves. This captivating journey into the heart of a country is a timely and brilliant celebration of a valiant and richly cultured people.

"The author's search for the annihilated Polish community captured in his grandfather's 1938 home movie. Traveling in Europe in August 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, David Kurtz, the author's grandfather, captured three minutes of ordinary life in a small, predominantly Jewish town in Poland on 16 mm Kodachrome color film. More than seventy years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community--an entire culture--that was annihilated in the Holocaust. Three Minutes in Poland traces Glenn Kurtz's remarkable four-year journey to identify the people in his grandfather's haunting images. His search takes him across the United States; to Canada, England, Poland, and Israel; to archives, film preservation laboratories, and an abandoned Luftwaffe airfield. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an eighty-six-year-old man who appears in the film as a thirteen-year-old boy. Painstakingly assembled from interviews, photographs, documents, and artifacts, Three Minutes in Poland tells the rich, funny, harrowing, and surprisingly intertwined stories of these seven survivors and their Polish hometown. Originally a travel souvenir, David Kurtz's home movie became the sole remaining record of a vibrant town on the brink of catastrophe. From this brief film, Glenn Kurtz creates a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival--a monument to a lost world"--

There were countless shocking accounts of WWII experiences portraying sufferings of innocent civilian victims. In the U.S., most of them focused on Nazi-German atrocities, victims of Holocaust but much fewer on the Soviet Union, a Nazi - German partner in crime, whose offences were whitewashed or underreported. “Two trains from Poland” is a beautiful and moving story, almost epical account of a little, 6 years old Polish girl from an upper middle class, father a lawyer; mother a university graduate, very literate housewife, a three year old sister and grandparents living nearby. It is a story of survival written 60 years after the events. A midnight knock at her door changed everything for a 6 year old Krystyna Sklenarz. In the middle of the night, a Soviet NKWD (KGB) agent informed her mother that that they are being deported from Poland to Siberia. When asked by her terrified and anxious mother for more details regarding their final destination, the NKWD officer coolly retorted “you are going to where the devil says goodbye”, an old Russian saying needing no further amplification. In her memoirs, Krystyna depicts horror of war from occupation by hostile powers, two years in Siberia, starvation, typhus, life threatening illness in a foreign and hostile country, void of rudimental sanitation and medication, shuttered and disrupted family life, death of her younger sister, an opium den in Persia, mingled with the native aristocracy, learned to speak Farsi, being torpedoed near South Africa, and the arriving in London to live through the Nazi Blitz in the London subway and talking briefly to the Queen. Through it all, Krystyna refused to give up. This is her story this is her journey from the Siberian wasteland, through her struggle to achieve education in a foreign language in only five years, to her entrance into medical school at only 17. The palette of her life has many hues some bright, some dark and hopeless, others funny. Events happened in her life which at times tested credulity. In Teheran in 1942, she was a guest on several occasions in the home of the Shah’s relative and in London, the Queen spoke to her a few words. Krystyna recounts all of this in this tale of courage and perseverance, discussing her stubborn refusal to allow the Nazis or Soviets to defeat her and recounts her later journey and struggles as a female striving to be a doctor when women weren’t supposed to be doctors. The surviving little girl grew up and became a principled and caring woman, whose life taught her self-reliance and dismissed outright any dependence on immediate relief of stress or adversity by artificial intervention through counseling, support groups, drugs legal or illegal, the devises many rely on in our society used to relieve stress and life disappointments. Doctor Sklenarz was an extraordinary woman weathering life in Soviet imprisonment , in exile , in then man-dominated field of medicine, winning admiration of her peers, patients, acquiesces, and love of the entire family scattered through the world.. Through out the entire fourteen months of struggle with painful terminal cancer, Krystyna was true to her character and principles, bearing her fate with dignified stoicism, endurance and without complaints. With her attention to detail and vivid recollection of events, Krystyna takes the reader through a remarkable journey in history and of the human spirit.

National Jewish Book Award Finalist: “A fresh and delightful portrait of Jewish renewal in Poland . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice Since the end of Communism, Jews from around the world have visited Poland to tour Holocaust-related sites. A few venture further, seeking to learn about their own Polish roots and connect with contemporary Poles. For their part, a growing number of Poles are fascinated by all things Jewish. In this book, Erica T. Lehrer explores the intersection of Polish and Jewish memory projects in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz in Krakow. Her own journey becomes part of the story as she demonstrates that Jews and Poles use spaces, institutions, interpersonal exchanges, and cultural representations to make sense of their historical inheritances.