A Stairwell in Lodz
by Constance Cappel
Category: Fiction

A Stairwell in Lodz is the complex and moving story of three women set in 1994 in the transitional period of Polish history, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although they live in separate apartments off of a common stairwell in a Soviet-style bloc building, they know little of each other´s secrets. They pass each other daily, yet misjudge and apply stereotypes to each of their lives, their past, and their true selves. Set in the former ghetto of Lodz,the large industrial city in central Poland, the main characters live in the shadow of the history of Lodz, and more specifically the horrors of the Lodz Ghetto. Few people in Lodz wish to talk or remember what happened in the Lodz Ghetto, unlike the Warsaw Uprising. In A Stairwell in Lodz through both the factual accounts and in the novel part, the reader learns why.