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A review by clairealex
Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II by Judy Rakowsky
4.0
In Portland OR there is a group whose goal is "memory activism," a group that started in order to keep the memory of Vanport, a WWII town built to house shipbuilders for Kaiser that got flooded out one Memorial Day. They have since added other local groups and places to the list of memories to keep alive. "Memory activism" is a good category for Jews in the Garden, a book that strives to keep alive the memory of WWII Polish Jews who were murdered, the folks who tried to shelter them, the folks who betrayed them, and the Poles who murdered them. The problem is both traditional and legal. There is a tradition of loyalty to fellow Poles that causes people to not tell who of their neighbors might have been Partisans--some of whom really did resistance work while others had enough of their own antisemitism to kill fellow Poles without orders from the German occupiers. Recent laws made it illegal to speak ill of fellow Poles in WWII in order to keep untarnished the myth of the innocent Poles, the heroic Poles.
This history is told through the search of Sam, who once lived in a Polish village and whose father owned a large lumbar yard that processed lumber in many of the homes in the area. He seeks out people he once was friends with, hoping they can give him information about his dead relatives and their would-be saviors. His motive includes to thank the latter. Judy, the writer, accompanies Sam on many of these trips and does searches in her own way as a journalist. Most of the telling is vivid and engaging. There are a couple chapters about documentation searches and laws that don't seem to fit until later chapters where the silence of the locals is ascribed to the laws. They could have been made more relevant with better transitions. But that is only a couple chapters in an otherwise engaging book.
For those of us whose knowledge of history is mostly western European, this book is an important read.
This history is told through the search of Sam, who once lived in a Polish village and whose father owned a large lumbar yard that processed lumber in many of the homes in the area. He seeks out people he once was friends with, hoping they can give him information about his dead relatives and their would-be saviors. His motive includes to thank the latter. Judy, the writer, accompanies Sam on many of these trips and does searches in her own way as a journalist. Most of the telling is vivid and engaging. There are a couple chapters about documentation searches and laws that don't seem to fit until later chapters where the silence of the locals is ascribed to the laws. They could have been made more relevant with better transitions. But that is only a couple chapters in an otherwise engaging book.
For those of us whose knowledge of history is mostly western European, this book is an important read.