The memoir of a young Jewish resistance fighter, written in a
Polish prison during WW II shortly before the author's escape - and
death. All Holocaust narratives are sad, but some are more
profoundly moving than others - for example, the story of Draenger.
Justyna (her resistance alias) was 25 years old when she penned
this narrative in 1943, after turning herself in to the Polish
police to be with her husband, who had been captured. She was
repeatedly tortured by the Gestapo, but despite her suffering, and
with the help of her fellow women inmates, she managed to write her
story on scraps of toilet paper sewed together with threads ripped
from the prisoners' clothing. In it she tells of her activities in
the Jewish youth resistance: how young men and women in their teens
and twenties fought valiantly with few weapons and little hope of
victory against the most terrible killing machine in humanity's
history; of their dreams and ponderings, their suffering and joy.
Draenger's story is tragic, first, because she and the people she
wrote about were young and courageous, and most of them died
horribly at the hands of the Nazis. But the narrative is also sad
because it does not always do justice to the remarkable effort
devoted to creating it, nor to the amazing woman who wrote it.
Draenger wanted the memoir to be literary, but with no chance to
edit what she wrote under such horrible circumstances, the result
is often disjointed. And because she was writing a "heroic
narrative," she turned all of her characters into stock figures
instead of the true-to-life heroes they were. She and her husband
rejoined the underground after escaping from prison and died while
fighting the Nazis. Reading her final words, one is most affected
by the thought of what this exceptional woman might have done had
she lived in a different time and a better place. (Kirkus Reviews)
Written during World War II, Justyna's Narrative is a compelling
account of the Krakow Jewish resistance. From February through
April 1943, Gusta Davidson Draenger (aka "Justyna"?) composed the
narrative on scraps of paper smuggled into her prison cell. Between
sessions of torture and interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo,
she recorded the activities and spiritual aspirations of the
clandestine group of young Jewish idealists who forged documents,
acquired weapons, and committed acts of defiance against the Nazis.
General
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