[Chleb Rzucony Umarlym. English]: Bread for the Departed / Tr. from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine

Imagine you're a child sat at a table with your family; father, mother, uncles, aunts, grandparents, on one of the great festivals celebrated by your people. You are waiting, listening for that one reference to the destruction of the great enemy so that you can whoop with joy. But the conversation turns to matters of concern that you can't quite grasp. Arguments begin about whether resettlement might mean something else. When I first read the opening chapter to "Bread for the Departed" I was mesmerised; it was as though I was really there, part of the gathering. "Bread for the Departed" is the tale of the Warsaw Ghetto as seen through the eyes of one small boy. You share the memories as you sink into the almost evryday "normality" that the nightmare has become. It is a novel that will never leave you.

This book is labelled fiction, but it is actually autobiographical, and stands up to any non-fiction written about the Warsaw ghetto during 1940-1942. It takes a strong stomach to read this book, because the author has a real eye for the most graphic detail and spares the reader nothing. At the end, you wonder how so many people survived as long as they did under such conditions. The story is told from the point of view of a child (which the author was at the time. It's not a pretty book, but it gives the most realistic picture I've seen yet of what ghetto life really must have been like.