City Within a City by Basia Temkin-Berman
$29.95
“I would like to describe this state within a state, or rather city within a city, this most underground of all underground communities, whose members met with each other, worked and talked in the midst of a population which didn’t suspect anything; where every street, every coffee shop, every tram stop called to mind dozens of unique adventures. Every name was false, every word that was uttered carried a double meaning, and every telephone conversation was more encrypted than the secret diplomatic documents of embassies.”
This diary was written in Polish when Basia (Batya), and her husband Dr. Adolf-Abraham Berman, lived on the Aryan side of Warsaw—the part designated by the Nazis for Polish Christians only—and led a secret network helping thousands of Jews to hide and survive.
Cosponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Dedicated to the memory of Leon Kupferstein, MD, a prominent psychoanalyst who passed away in 2006.
“After a break which lasted several years I have begun writing again” —Thus opens the diary of Basia Berman. It ends with the following words: “I cannot write anymore, the candle is going out. Once again sounds of the front come from the direction of the Vistula.”
–Basia Berman
