1938-1944

This part describes how Warsaw became the author's home in 1938. He held various jobs until he was forced to live in the ghetto, where he was employed as a translator and interpreter by the Jewish Council. At the beginning of 1943 he became a member of the Jewish resistance and managed to escape the ghetto with his wife after their parents and relatives had been sent to concentration camps where they were murdered. His account of the sordid and humiliating conditions of life in the ghetto is an important document of the barbarism of the Nazis and the valor of the Jews, especially because he worked in the offices of the council and was privy to major encounters with high-ranking officials on both the German and Jewish sides. Moreover, he experienced the daily deprivation as most of the Jews did and worked clandestinely with members of the resistance. Once he and his wife managed to get outside the ghetto, they were hidden by simple Polish peasants in a crude cellar for close to two years.