WINTER IN THE MORNING: A Young Girl's Life in the Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond 1939-1945

by Janina Bauman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1986

One girl's attempt to maintain her humanity in the face of the horrors in the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. Bauman, the daughter of a successful doctor and a wealthy, socially well-connected mother, was 13 when Nazi troops stormed Warsaw and shattered her world. For the next six years, Janina, her younger sister and her mother (her father was killed in the Katyn Massacre) endured abuse, hunger, fear and treachery and witnessed the slaughter of over 300,000 Jews less fortunate than themselves. Using her childhood diaries as a base, Bauman re-creates her family's fight for survival as well as her struggles to develop a sense of her own identity in a world gone mad. Forced behind the walls of the ghetto, Janina slowly becomes inured to the suffering around her. But it is impossible to ignore her growing need for love, her yearning to share her confusion and doubt with someone outside her family--even though she is aware that the person she is reaching out to can at any moment be swept into oblivion. The net slowly tightens around the ghetto as the mass deportations begin, and the tenuous order that had prevailed is destroyed, unleashing unspeakable horrors and separating Janina from her young love. Janina, her mother and sister manage, through the aid of friends and money, to cross to the ""Aryan"" side of the city and begin two years of hiding. Life there is no less terrifying, but what makes this and all of Bauman's narrative so powerful is that it is filtered through the eyes of an adolescent girl trying to deal with the emotions raging within her: her guilt at having been able to survive and not aiding in the resistance--but also the emotions common to any 16-year-old, the need for attention and the sexual awakening that often make her selfish and demanding. This picture of the human capacity to retain its dignity, its compassion and even its weaknesses in the face of inhuman circumstances gives Bauman's story its lingering power.

Pub Date: March 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Free Press/Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION