Michal Grynberg (1909–2000)
Autore di Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto
Sull'Autore
Michal Grynberg, an associate of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, devoted decades of his life to compiling and publishing firsthand accounts from ghettos throughout Poland.
Opere di Michal Grynberg
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Altri nomi
- Grynberg, Majer
Grynberg, Mayer - Data di nascita
- 1909-10-15
- Data di morte
- 2000-04-20
- Luogo di sepoltura
- Jewish cemetery, Okopowa Street, Warsaw
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- Poland
- Nazione (per mappa)
- Poland
- Luogo di nascita
- Sławatycze, Poland
- Luogo di morte
- Warsaw, Poland
- Luogo di residenza
- Legnica, Poland
- Attività lavorative
- historian
oral history interviewer
Holocaust survivor
author
educator - Organizzazioni
- Jewish Historical Institute
- Breve biografia
- Michał Grynberg was born Mayer Grynberg to a Jewish family in Sławatycze, Poland. His parents were Gitla (Blumsztajn) and Borys Grynberg. After completing his education, he became a teacher. In 1932, he joined the Communist Party of Poland, whose members were persecuted by the government, and spent three years in prison. Following the outbreak of World War II, he found himself in the Soviet Union, and served in the Red Army from 1942 to 1945. Following the war, he returned to Poland and settled in Legnica, where he headed the local Jewish Committee. As a Jewish Polish historian, he became a longtime associate and researcher of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. He is best known for his work compiling and publishing oral histories of Jews who survived the Holocaust. His books included Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto (1988; USA edition, 2002).
Utenti
Recensioni
This is a fine collection of accounts, most of which have never been previously published, that really gave me the sense of what it was like to live and fight and die in the Warsaw ghetto. The writers were a wide variety of people -- mostly Jews of course, but there were some gentiles, and even one young child -- and there were biographical sketches revealing details of each person's life and fate, if known. Recommended for scholarly Holocaust collections.
This review says it better than I can:
From Publishers Weekly
The 29 never-before-published diaries, letters and personal accounts in the late historian Grynberg's vital collection offer a devastating portrait of life in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. Less than 1% of the almost 500,000 Jews confined there survived the disease, malnutrition and deportation to concentration camps; a handful of the contributors escaped the ghetto by navigating the sewer system to the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. Historian Emanuel Ringelblum's noted journals provided an exhaustive, firsthand record of the Warsaw Ghetto, but these skillfully translated records by shopkeepers and doctors, dentists and schoolgirls are more powerful. Ghetto residents write of needing to get permission to bake matzoh, longing for the patter of autumn rain or hiding in a room with 200 stifling, hot, dirty, stinking people; two cases of full-blown tuberculosis; one of measles. Several of the diarists are members of the Jewish police, who express the agony of trying to provide for their families while collaborating with the enemy. The diversity of the contributors' cultural and economic backgrounds adds to the mural of a variegated Jewish Warsaw during Nazi occupation; mostly translated from Polish, the different voices include assimilationists, traditionalists, communists, socialists and Zionists. Some are despairing; others, like the brilliant Helena Midler, whose parodic Bunker Weekly stuck out its tongue at hardship, find ways to laugh. Many of the accounts note the meticulous planning behind the Nazis' dizzying regulations, and the editor adds relevant data, including maps and detailed rosters of laborers. If one can read only one book on the Warsaw Ghetto, this is it.… (altro)
From Publishers Weekly
The 29 never-before-published diaries, letters and personal accounts in the late historian Grynberg's vital collection offer a devastating portrait of life in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. Less than 1% of the almost 500,000 Jews confined there survived the disease, malnutrition and deportation to concentration camps; a handful of the contributors escaped the ghetto by navigating the sewer system to the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. Historian Emanuel Ringelblum's noted journals provided an exhaustive, firsthand record of the Warsaw Ghetto, but these skillfully translated records by shopkeepers and doctors, dentists and schoolgirls are more powerful. Ghetto residents write of needing to get permission to bake matzoh, longing for the patter of autumn rain or hiding in a room with 200 stifling, hot, dirty, stinking people; two cases of full-blown tuberculosis; one of measles. Several of the diarists are members of the Jewish police, who express the agony of trying to provide for their families while collaborating with the enemy. The diversity of the contributors' cultural and economic backgrounds adds to the mural of a variegated Jewish Warsaw during Nazi occupation; mostly translated from Polish, the different voices include assimilationists, traditionalists, communists, socialists and Zionists. Some are despairing; others, like the brilliant Helena Midler, whose parodic Bunker Weekly stuck out its tongue at hardship, find ways to laugh. Many of the accounts note the meticulous planning behind the Nazis' dizzying regulations, and the editor adds relevant data, including maps and detailed rosters of laborers. If one can read only one book on the Warsaw Ghetto, this is it.… (altro)
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 4
- Utenti
- 148
- Popolarità
- #140,180
- Voto
- 4.2
- Recensioni
- 3
- ISBN
- 9
- Lingue
- 2
A book to remind us of small heroisms,and to remind us of the human beings capability for evil,and capacity for suffering.
This ought to be standard reading in high school.