Warsaw, Poland, once described as the "Paris of the East," had been transformed into a landscape of ruin by the ravages of World War II. Among the few areas of the city center that escaped Nazi decimation was Ujazdowskie Avenue, where German officials lived during the occupation. In the late 1940s, while most surviving Polish Jews were making their homes in new countries, ten Jewish families reclaimed a once elegant building at 16 Ujazdowskie Avenue and began reconstructing their lives. These families rebuilt on the rubble of the Polish capital and created new communities as they sought to distance themselves from the memory of a painful past. Based on interviews with family members, extensive archival research, and the families' personal papers and correspondence, Karen Auerbach presents an engrossing story of loss and rebirth, political faith and disillusionment, and the persistence of Jewishness.
"Poignant and nuanced, this work is an important contribution… Highly recommended."
Choice
"An interesting and often moving tableau about the efforts of some wounded people to overcome their personal tragedies while redefining their communal loyalties."
Booklist
"Amply illustrated with photographs of the families whose lives Auerbach chronicles, the book reverberates with hope and trembles with the tentative efforts of the people to rekindle the flames of their humanity after inestimable loss and trauma."
