Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 - Softcover

Paulsson, Gunnar S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300204779 ISBN 13: 9780300204773

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Publisher

Winner of the 1998 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History (for "an outstanding unpublished work in one of the fields of interest of the Wiener Library. These include Central Europe and Jewish history in the 20th century, the Second World War, fascism and totalitarianism, political violence, racism, etc."). Also winner of the 2004 Polish Studies Association / Orbis Prize (for "the best first book in English on any aspect of Polish affairs published between 2002 and 2004")

From the Back Cover

"For many of us in this field it is always hard to imagine something new. Paulsson manages to break new ground, however, and offers an intelligent, fresh analysis." -Michael Marrus

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300204779
• ISBN 13: 9780300204773
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328