Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience - Hardcover

by Sara Nomberg-Przytyk (Author), Holli Levitsky (Contribution by), Justyna Wlodarczyk (Contribution by)

Communist Poland: A Jewish Woman's Experience is the first-person account by Jewish journalist Sara Nomberg-Przytyk of surviving Auschwitz then rising to various leadership roles in the newly-formed postwar Polish Communist Party. Building a just and equitable Poland for the common Pole through communism was her dream. The reality was neither simple nor successful. Working for heavily censored newspapers and periodicals, Nomberg-Przytyk witnessed firsthand the inner workings of a communist government plagued by the same Kafkaesque bureaucracy and antisemitism that she had been certain it would fix. Her memoir provides a comprehensive account as she slowly changed from enthusiastic practitioner to witness of a system that failed her and many others. This is the first published edition of this text, originally recorded as oral testimony in Polish but translated into English by Paula Parsky, and includes a critical introduction by the co-editors, American and Polish academics Holli Levitsky and Justyna Wlodarczyk, as well as extensive annotations.

Author Biography

Holli Levitsky is founder and director of the Jewish Studies Program and professor of English at Loyola Marymount University.

Justyna Wlodarczyk is associate professor and chair of the Department of North American Cultures and Literatures at the University of Warsaw.