Beyond These Walls: Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto - A Young Girl's Story

Description

Janina Bauman was a year older than Anne Frank when the Second World War began but, unlike The Diary of Anne Frank, this is a story of survival. When Hitler's decree forced her family into the Warsaw Ghetto, Janina, an intelligent, lively girl, suddenly found herself in a cramped flat, hiding with other Jewish families. At first even curfews and the casual cruelty meted out by the German occupiers could not dim her passion for books, boys and romance. Then came the raids, and Janina, with her sister and mother, had to keep on the move, hiding in the ruins of the ghetto to avoid being one of thousands rounded up every day and deported to the camps. Their escape to the 'Aryan' side was followed by two years in hiding, taking shelter with those willing to help them and living in constant fear of betrayal. Told through her teenage diaries, giving her story a rare immediacy, this is the extraordinary tale of a passionate young woman's courage and survival.

Janina Lewinson-Bauman was born in 1926. The comfortable life she shared with her family in Warsaw was destroyed with the outbreak of the Second World War. She has worked in Polish film as a translator, researcher and script editor. She now lives in Leeds and is married to the well-known sociologist Professor Zygmunt Bauman. They have two daughters.

'I found it absorbing ... testaments such as Janina Bauman's are important and should never be allowed to fade away. The drama of Anne Frank is rightly always before us but the equally vital stories of those who suffered but survived need to be listened