The Rat Palace

New Position. Don't miss this fascinating story by Dr. Rutha before the movie version. Bring an eyewitness to the Holocaust, author's portrayal of the Jewish Ghetto's last hours is unmatched. In this allegorical novel of the Holocaust, Polish author Bogdan Rutha presents a story in which the protagonist, a young gentile, is drawn to the ghetto, first by his intellectual discussions with Dr. Glatter, a Jewish physician, then later by the beautiful Ada, the "Angel of the ghetto", the narrator becomes aware of the increasingly bizarre and dehumanizing world of the “Jewish Districts” in Poland. As the narrator resolves to enlist the aid of his friend, Tadeusz M. to rescue Dr. Glatter and Ada, he discovers the old physician’s stunning secret. “The Rat Palace” explores both man’s inhumanity and redemptive qualities in the riveting Kafkaesque novel that will capture the reader’s imagination in an unforgettable way.

Bogdan Rutha was born in Poznan, in 1920 to a family of landowners from the Lednogora region. His father was Stanislaw Rutha, and his mother was Helene Borkiewicz. Upon his graduation from the middle school in 1936, he had contracted tuberculosis and went to Davos, Switzerland for treatment.

He moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, and began medical studies, which he continued in Warsaw upon his return to Poland. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he lived in Zakopane, in Cracow, in Piotrkow, and in Warsaw. At the turn of 1939 to 1940, he joined AK-Armia Krojowa(The Home Army). He was involved in organizing transports of Jews and other persecuted by the Gestapo to neighboring Slovakia and Hungary.

After the war, he worked on translations of medical books. Among many of his achievements, the most memorable is the first full translation of Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex by Russian physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov. He made his literary debut in 1954 in Zycie Literakie (Literary Life), His first novel. The Stories From Davos became a great publishing event of 1961. The first edition sold out in a week. A paradoxical situation had occurred: before any information about the book appeared in the newspapers, the book had disappeared from the store shelves.

This phenomenon was repeated with each following book, whose titles include: The Stories from Davos (1961); The Midnight Mission (1970); Isle of the Dogs (1972); The Rat Palace (1973); A Room Full of Moons (1975); Great Wonderful Life (1978); and A Winter Walk (1983).

Rutha worked with the Western Press Agency, and was a prize winner of many literary contests, a member of the International Association of Doctors and Writers, and was awarded the Golden Order of Merit. He died in 1983.