Book Description

David, a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; escapes from the Ghetto after the fall of the Uprising. His family had perished in the death camp; but the fate of his brother Stefan, who joined the Jewish Police in the Ghetto; is unknown. David hides on the "Aryan" side with the help of his teacher and his high school friends. When the Gestapo raids his place, he escapes but is accosted by a man blackmailing Jews. David overpowers him and leaves him unconscious. He meets Morris, a Jew, who also lost his entire family. Morris goes to "Hotel Polski" and buys himself a South American visa, which would let him leave Poland and go to Switzerland. Morris is taken to the Bergen~ Belsen concentration camp and the "Hotel Polski" affair turns out to be a Gestapo trap; they all are eventually killed in Auschwitz. David's joins Polish underground army and prints illegal leaflets. He takes part in the sabotage action where he kills the railroad guard and rescues a teenage brother of his friend. He has to run away again when he is about to be reported by a janitor. When the Warsaw Uprising ignites; David and his friends fight the Nazis. David witnesses a Polish MP executing a Jew falsely accused of being a Nazi spy. David meets "Renia", an Uprising runner, his first love. He finds out about the murder of several Jews by the rogue company of the Polish underground forces. He swims across the Vistula River to inform the Polish General in the Russian Army about the tragic fate of the Uprising. "Renia" is killed in action and the Uprising capitulates. The fighters are taken to POW camps and civilians to a labor camps. David escapes from Warsaw and works in a Polish field hospital as an attendant. He has to escape again; being afraid he was recognized as a Jew. He joins the partisans and is wounded in action. When the Red Army liberates the area he returns to destroyed Warsaw and meets Rebecca, the love of his live. Rebecca had become deathly ill with "blood poisoning" and David travelled illegally to Berlin to buy Penicillin to save her. The action moves to Silesia, where David's brother, Stefan, under the false name of Jan Baranski joins the communist party and hated Secret Police. He tries to hide his shameful secret from the Warsaw Ghetto. He is paranoid, unable to sleep and ends up in a hospital with the overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. David is helping the Jews wounded in the "pogrom" in Kielce, where more then 40 Jews were killed by the Polish mob. David's best friend (who had returned from the POW camp) gets arrested by the Secret Police and dies during the interrogation. Jan Baranski is called to the Secret Police headquarter in Warsaw and finds that his brother David is alive and about to be arrested. While brothers meet, Jan advises that David should escape from Poland through the Czech border but gets furious when David calls him a Jewish Policeman. He then calls the border police and orders David's arrest. David reconsiders his plans, suspecting his brother double •crossed him. He decides to escape through the western border to Berlin and eventually to Palestine.