Book Description

A 12-year-old smuggler who was outside the Warsaw ghetto walls when the ghetto uprising began in the spring of 1943. With little hope that his family would survive, he fled to the countryside with false identification papers and worked on a farm where he was considered part of the family. Forced to return to Warsaw, where he realized once and for all that his family was gone, he came under the protection of the Salesian Fathers and spent much of the next year in one of their orphanages. This is where he struggled with the loss of his family and his loneliness, guilt, fear and indecision regarding his "dual identity." When the Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, then 14-year-old Arthur Ney joined the barricades and fought the Germans - W Hour is the code name for the Uprising. During the rebels capitulation, he escaped and remained with the Salesians until he was found by an aunt and uncle and ulitmately taken to Canada.