At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland

Nahum Bogner; Ralph Mandel (translator)

ISBN 10: 9653083317 / ISBN 13: 9789653083318

Published by Yad Vashem, 2009

About this Item

Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Published 2009. Hardcover, 368 pp.; 23 cm; translated from the Hebrew by Ralph Mandel; language editor Asher Weill; illustrated with black-and-white archival photographs from the Yad Vashem Photo Archives and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives.In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Green pictorial paper-over-boards (matching the dust jacket design) with light bumping to the edges and mild surface wear. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket with the same cover photograph (Janina Nebel with her Christian guardian Leokadia Nepomucena, from the USHMM Photo Archives) shows light bumping and creasing to the edges and mild shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover.Scholarly study by Dr. Nahum Bogner of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, examining the rescue of Jewish children in occupied Poland who survived under assumed identities, hidden with Polish Catholic families, in villages, on the streets, or in convents. Bogner draws on testimonies and memoirs to document the activities of the Zegota organization (which saved approximately 2,500 children, mainly in Warsaw), the lives of "Parobek" children working as farmhands under false names, and the experiences of children sheltered in convents. The second half of the book traces the postwar struggle to locate the hidden children and return them to the Jewish community, including the efforts of the Zionist Koordynacja for the Redemption of Jewish Children and the legal and emotional difficulties of removing children from the Christian families and convents that had raised them. Awarded the Buchman Prize of Yad Vashem for Holocaust Literature.Contents: Preface; Difficulties of Rescue in Poland; Children Hidden with Christian Families; Shepherds and Parobeks (Farm Hands): The Village as a Refuge; The Street Children; The Rescue of Children by the Zegota Organization; The Convent Children; The Problem of the Children after Liberation; Holocaust Orphans and the National Agenda; The Zionist Koordynacja for the Redemption of Jewish Children; Redeeming the Children; Back to the Bosom of their People; Conclusion; Sources and Bibliography; Index.

Seller Inventory # 20260518024

Bibliographic Details

• Title: At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland
• Publisher: Yad Vashem
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9653083317
• ISBN 13: 9789653083318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 16 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

Synopsis

Hidden under false identities in cities, on farms and in convents and monasteries, young Jewish children survived the war by the grace of kindhearted strangers. Their story is told by an historian who survived the war as a child. He describes how the emotional closeness so essential for survival made it so hard for the children to leave their host families after the war.

The book was awarded the Buchman Prize of Yad Vashem for Holocaust Literature.

About the Author

Dr. Nahum Bogner studied at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and specializes in research on the Holocaust and the period of the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel. He has been a Research Associate in the Israel Galili Hagana Center for Defense Studies, and the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem.