Night Voices
Subtitle: Heard in the Shadow of Hitler and Stalin
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: February 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780773526068
Subjects: Biography: general; European history: from c 1900 -; Jewish studies; 20th century; History: World; History; History - General History; Poland; Eastern Europe - General
Description: "Set against the background of pre-war Poland, the Second World War, and the early years of post-war Soviet domination, Night Voices tells the story of Stasia Alapin Rubilowicz and the people around her. A middle-class Jew brought up to be patriotic, non-religious, and assimilationist, Stasia is forced to confront her racial identity - before the war as a student, then during the horrors of the Nazi occupation, and finally when faced with the failure of a communist state that had promised to rid the country of injustice and bigotry." "Based on interviews with Stasia, her second husband, Mietek, her son, Peter, and close friend, Alina, the narrative follows Stasia and Alina through the nightmare of the Warsaw ghetto and their escape, Stasia's betrayal to the Gestapo and rescue by Christian Polish friends, and Mietek's years as a front-line doctor with the Red Army and then as a medical administrator for the Security apparatus. As the Soviets advance into Poland, Stasia becomes physician to a propaganda unit and Alina, liberated from a concentration camp, works as an interpreter to a Red Army intelligence unit. Peter grows up in a world where nothing is as it seems to be - where, for instance, the charming father of his childhood friend turns out to be the notorious torturer responsible for Alina's enduring months of interrogation by the Security police."--Jacket.