HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?

An often compelling memoir recounting the wartime experiences of a nobly born Polish teen-age girl. The countess' tale does not initially possess the depth of many Holocaust memoirs of Jewish death-camp survivors. The aristocratic Zamoyska family loses its grand manor and large estate, but the spoiled and privileged Christine is not able to convey the loss in tragic terms, and a lengthy flashback to a boar hunt and a brief flirtation with a young German soldier do little to engage the reader's sympathy. While the poor little rich family encounters the terrors of Nazi reprisals and roundups, mortal danger does not really figure in until the spirited Christine joins the Polish underground. But as our heroine's life--along with coauthor Holmberg's considerable skills--warms up for the stretch run of 1944-45, the book gains a drama and pathos comparable to others of its genre. The countess grows up before us into a young woman; her friend becomes the third corpse in a human bench for cellmates in a watery dungeon run by the Soviet NKVD. A memoir that helps us remember the suffering of the Poles under German occupation and Russian domination.