THE STARS BEAR WITNESS

A sober, commemorative and extensively detailed record of the Warsaw ghetto by a man who had considerable stature in pre-war Poland as a labor leader. This follows the story of a condemned people from the destruction of the city, to the organization- by the Jews- of relief measures and an underground, to the mass terror which pervaded Poles as well as Jews after the establishment of the ghetto. Here were the efforts made to secure food of any kind; to provide for the homeless children; to secure arms (the activity in which Comrade Bernard was chiefly engaged); the raids; the killings; the executions and the mass deportations; and finally the single determination of all to fight back which led to the uprising, short lived as it may have been. The days and nights of hiding, the attempts to provide get-aways, the installation of camouflaged bunkers, on and on for the few that survived and with the end of the war, again persecution rather than liberation... The story of the Warsaw ghetto is an unfailingly impressive one (this is not the first), but one questions if it will find an audience-particularly on the heels of Odd Nansen's From Day To Day.