Secret city : the hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945

Resource Information

The work Secret city : the hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945 represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bowdoin College Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Secret city : the hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945

Title remainder

the hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945

Statement of responsibility

Gunnar S. Paulsson

Creator

• Paulsson, Gunnar S

Subject

• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Poland | Warsaw
• Jews -- Poland | Warsaw -- History -- 20th century
• Warsaw (Poland) -- Ethnic relations
• Warsaw (Poland) -- History -- 20th century
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews | Rescue -- Poland | Warsaw

Language

eng

Summary

Though the Nazis forced most of Warsaw's Jews into the city's infamous ghetto during World War II, some 28,000 Jews either hid and never entered the Warsaw Ghetto or escaped from it. This book-the first detailed treatment of Jewish escape and hiding during the Holocaust-tells the dramatic story of the hidden Jews of Warsaw. Gunnar S. Paulsson shows that after the 1942 deportations nearly a quarter of the ghetto's remaining Jews managed to escape. Once in hiding, connected by elaborate networks of which Poles, Germans, and the Jews themselves were largely unaware, they formed what can aptly be called a secret city. Paulsson challenges many established assumptions. He shows that despite appalling difficulties and dangers, many of these Jews survived; that the much-reviled German, Polish, and Jewish policemen, as well as Jewish converts and their families, were key in helping Jews escape; that though many more Poles helped than harmed the Jews, most stayed neutral; and that escape and hiding happened spontaneously, without much help from either the Polish or the Jewish underground. He suggests that the Jewish leadership was wrong to dismiss the possibility of escape, staking everything on a hopeless uprising. Paulsson's engrossing book offers a new perspective on Jewish honor and Holocaust history

Cataloging source

DLC

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps
• plates

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography