Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland

Description

Author Richard S. Hollander was devastated when his parents were killed in an automobile accident in 1986. While rummaging through their attic, he discovered letters from a family he never knew - his father's mother, three sisters, and their husbands and children. The letters, neatly stacked in a briefcase, were written from Krakow, Poland, between 1939 and 1942. They depict day-to-day life under the most extraordinary pain and stress. At the same time, Richard's father, Joseph Hollander, was fighting the United States government to avoid deportation and death. Richard was astounded to learn that his father saved the lives of many Polish Jews, but - despite heroic efforts - could not save his family.

Christopher R. Browning is the author of seven books on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (with contributions from Jurgen Matthaus) in 2004 and Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland in 1992. Both of these books received the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. With Cambridge University Press he has published The Path to Genocide (1992) and Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (2000). Christopher Browning received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington for 25 years, before moving in 1999 to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill as the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History. He has delivered the George Macauley Trevelyan Lectures at the University of Cambridge (1999) and the George Mosse Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2002). He has been an expert witness at various trials of accused Nazi criminals in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as in the 'Holocaust denial' trials of Ernst Zundel in Toronto (1988) and Irving vs. Lipstadt in London (2000). Richard S. Hollander is the son of Joseph A. Hollander. Joseph Hollander's mother, three sisters, their spouses, and children wrote the poignant and powerful letters from Krakow, Poland (1939-42) that comprise the bulk of this book. Hollander has an undergraduate degree in political science from Johns Hopkins University, a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and a master of liberal arts degree also from Johns Hopkins. He has been a reporter and columnist on two daily newspapers - The Evening News in Newsburgh, New York and The Baltimore News-American. Most of his journalism career was as a reporter for WBAL-TV in Baltimore, Maryland, where he specialized in covering politics and government. Presently, Mr Hollander is president of Millbrook Communications in Baltimore, Maryland, an advertising and marketing firm. He has taught journalism at the University of Baltimore and at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, and has also worked in Congress for Rep. John G. Dow as a press secretary and speech writer. Hollander is the author of Video Democracy (1986), a projection of the impact of interactive technology on American politics. In the community, Mr Hollander served for eight years (1996-2004; five as chair) on the Baltimore Community Relations Commission, the city's civil rights enforcement agency. He was also President of Beth El Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, from 2005 to 2007.

'... this book achieves the elusive combination of being of value to experts in the field and of interest to a wider public ... it also remains highly relevant to today's world.' Keith Stuart Parkes, Polish-Studies.Interdisciplinary (www.pol-int.org)