I got this book suggestion from Kathy Hickok. It was a good one. Thank you, Kathy.
Lalechka is a book written like fiction but based on a previously unpublished primary source from World War II, the diary of a Jewish woman in Poland who gave her baby to her two best friends from high school to be hidden and raised as Catholic till after the war. This young mother, her husband, and her parents were all shortly thereafter killed by the Nazis in the liquidation of the Shedlitz ghetto (Jewish area of the city).
This book reminds me that, though much has been written about the Warsaw ghetto and the Jewish uprising against the Nazis there, every city with a Jewish population eventually had a ghetto and most of Poland's Jews died as a result.
The description of how a city was flattened and between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews were exterminated, with whole families wiped out, never stops being a sobering reminder of how evil can run unchecked, even among a people who are mostly moral at the outset. People from other countries (including Ukraine) were brought in to help the Nazis brutalize the Jews but Sophia and Irena, the two girls keeping the Jewish baby, had to constantly beware of even their neighbors, who were encouraged to inform the Nazis about anything that looked unusual.
This is an important story. I am glad this source, and others like it, are being published before everyone who participated in the actual events is gone from this earth.
Thank you Mary! I just visited one of the Holocaust museums - the one in Texas. One of the guides was from Turkey - a Jew. His grandparents sent his mother to the US just before the Nazi round up of the Jews. She came alone at age 16 and could speak no English. She left her whole family behind as her parents insisted on her journey. He said it was because of that, he is alive today. So - saying that was to get the book you are sharing!
This sounds very interesting. I plan to read it sometime in the future. Thank you so much for sharing.