Book Description

Night Voices tells the little-known story of young Polish Jewish idealists, survivors of the Holocaust, who chose to support Poland's post-war communist government in the belief that socialism offered the path to a more just society. It is the story of Poland in the years leading up to the war, the horrors Polish Jews faced during the Nazi occupation, the brief period of hope when they believed they were building a better society, and their gradual disillusionment as state sponsored corruption, brutality, Stalinist paranoia, and anti-Semitism developed. The story is told through the memories of four people, Stasia Alapin Rubilowicz, her husband Mietek Rubilowicz, her son Peter Alapin, and her friend Alina. Life in Poland before and during the war is seen primarily through Stasia's eyes, who evokes her youth in an affluent family, largely assimilated into Polish society. This life was shattered forever in her early adulthood when the Nazis invaded, bringing death and destruction to Poland and to Polish Jews in particular. She recounts the anguish of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, her escape from it, her survival on the run, her betrayal to the Gestapo by a woman who had known her at school, and her rescue from prison by Christian Polish friends at the risk of their lives. In the second half of the book we are introduced to Mietek and her friend Alina, who describe their experiences in Poland during and after the war and their hopes that communism would rid the country of bigotry injustice, and want. But as old hatreds, now supported by a perverted catechism of socialist dogma, reawakened anti-Semitism they became increasingly disillusioned, ultimately deciding they had no recourse but to leave Poland and start a new life elsewhere. By 1968 the Polish communist leadership, through a campaign of intimidation and harassment, had succeeded in ridding Poland of virtually all its surviving Jews. Night Voices is a testimony both to the strength of the human spirit and to our capacity for self-delusion.