JRI-Poland Book Club News, May 2025
On March 31, 2025, JRI-Poland kicked-off the first meeting of its Book Club with a lively 90 minute discussion with author Daniel Mendelsohn after reading his well-received book, “The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million”. With more than 35 participants, this meeting clearly demonstrated that JRI-Poland researchers are interested in reading and discussing books together! Daniel was fabulous at keeping attendees engaged and moving forward. He was particularly good at understanding what a group of genealogists would be interested in hearing about his book.
Recording of Daniel Mendelsohn Session Available on JRI-Poland On Demand Video Library
The recording of this session with Daniel Mendelsohn is available to JRI-Poland’s dues-paying members (who pay a specific $54 annually exclusively for this purpose) by accessing our Members Only Video Library. The Video Library can be reached once you log in by hovering over the “HELLO” at the right hand corner of the screen, which invokes a drop down menu. Membership can be obtained on the My Profile option on that same drop down menu.
Announcing Four Candidates for the Next Book Club Selection
Four books have been carefully curated by our JRI-Poland Book Club facilitators, Hadassah Lipsius and Judy Baston. They represent a broad range of types of literature and topics. Polling has just opened on the JRI-Poland Community Forum for any researcher to participate in order to select the next book; however, discussion groups are open only to active JRI-Poland members.
The next four candidates for the Book Club’s selection are as follows:
1) The Light of Days – The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos
2) The Keeper of Hidden Books
3) In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb
4) The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation
1) The Light of Days – The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos
Author – Judy Batalion – (Non-Fiction – History – 2021)
Literary Awards
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for History & Biography (2021), Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Holocaust Studies (2021), National Jewish Book Awards for Woman’s Studies (2021)
https://www.judybatalion.com/book-the-light-of-days
One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.
Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children.
2) The Keeper of Hidden Books
Author – Madeline Martin (historical fiction, 2023)
Literary Awards
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction (2023)
https://madelinemartin.com/books/the-keeper-of-hidden-books/
A heartwarming story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.
3) In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb
Translated by Goldie Morgentaler (Short Stories, Historical Finction 2023)
With the addition of two stories, namely, “The Masterpiece,” “April 19th” and “Letters to God,” this collection makes available in English for the first time a complete selection of Chava Rosenfarb’s short stories all in one place. All the stories in this collection deal with the afterlife of Holocaust survivors in North America. Since Chava Rosenfarb was herself a Holocaust survivor who settled in Montreal after the war, she speaks in these stories from personal experience at the same time as she allows her imagination to inhabit the minds of characters far different from herself.
See here about Chava Rosenfarb https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/rosenfarb-chava
4) The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation
Author – Louise Steinman (Non-Fiction, Memoir 2013)
A lyrical literary memoir that explores the exhilarating, discomforting, and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation taking place in Poland today.
Although an estimated 80 percent of American Jews are of Polish descent, many in the postwar generation and those born later know little about their families’ connection to their ancestral home. In fact, many Jews continue to think of Poland as a bastion of anti-Semitism, since nearly the entire population of Polish Jewry was killed in the Holocaust. The reality is more complex: although German-occupied Poland was the site of great persecution towards Jews, it was also the epicenter of European Jewish life for centuries. Louise Steinman sets out to examine the burgeoning Polish-Jewish reconciliation movement through the lens of her own family’s history, joining the ranks of Jews of Polish descent who are confronting both Poland’s heroism and occupation-afflicted atrocities, and who are seeking to reconnect with their families’ Polish roots.
More about Louise Steinman on her blog at https://louisesteinman.com/
Help Us Choose Our Next Book
Voting is now open to help us select our next book. Members can submit their vote here:
https://forum.jri-poland.org/t/vote-for-the-next-jri-poland-book-club-pick/21082