Twelve stories, the first of them providing a succession of vignettes of a way of life Asch had known before the war, in a Polish village, with a warm and friendly give and take between rich and poor, maintaining of orthodox traditions, the humor, the ritual and worship, and so on. Vivid enough, but this has somehow a remoteness as of a picture viewed, not experienced. The peculiar poignancy of the last half of the stories lies particularly in stories of Polish children under German occupation. For the special quality of these tales read Jewish Eyes, an unforgettable story of a cruel overseer at a concentration camp who had a child's eyes goudged out to make carrings -- a story that leaves an unorthodox but memorable conception of heaven; The Duty to Live- in which a little girl saves her baby brother by going to the nuns, but makes her declaration of faith before an understanding and compassionate Mother Superior; the story of the daughters of Jacob, who prepared themselves for death rather than submission to the lusts of the conquerors; the symbolic story of the lovely bride of an American soldier, who bore upon her hands the stigmata of the crucifixion of her fellow Jews in the Nazi concentration camps. One feels that here is indelible tribute to Polish Jewry.