The Wartime Diary Of Edmund Kessler [Hardcover]

Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years 1942 and 1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, in the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who as a teenager was a caretaker for the hidden Jews on his familys farm. Edmunds daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written an epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. This volume is a tremendous resource for historians, scholars, and those interested in the Holocaust. The preface to this joint memoir asks rhetorically if the world needs yet another Holocaust memoir. The answer is emphatically yes. Each one is a unique witness to the experiences of millions who did not survive to tell their stories. Edmund Kessler was an attorney in Lwow, Poland whose family suffered under both the Nazis and the Soviets. His diary of the years from 1942-1944 was written during that time and later edited by his daughter. His bewilderment, disgust, and rage against the oppressors are contrasted to his profound admiration for the Poles who risked their live to save him and others. The diary is accompanied by poems he wrote during the war as well as testimony from another survivor and from the son of the family who sheltered twenty-two Jews for nearly two years. Kessler's daughter, Renata, gives a brief history of the family and what happened to them after the war. The blending of the voices telling this story creates a powerful hymn to human determination and decency. The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is not only a grlÃ"