To Tell at Last: Survival Under False Identity, 1941-45

Blanca Rosenberg's story tells a remarkable (and often improbably lucky) story of a young woman, newly married, with a small child, who manages to survive through a series of hair-raising adventures as a disguised Aryan in wartime Poland. She loses the child, while still in the ghetto, but thereafter, she escapes and eventually ends up as the head housekeeper for a highly placed German officer in Warsaw. She saves her best friend too, who unlike Blanca, cannot pass so easily, and in the process, discovers that a number of the officer's staff are also Jews in hiding. She does her job so well that she is sent to Heidelberg to another family, where she ultimately survives the horrors of the end of the war in Germany. There is a wonderful love story at the end, once again beyond ordinary expectations, and having emigrated to this country, she becomes a distinguished Professor of Social Work at Columbia University. I knew Blanca personally -- and even at the age of 85, she has lost none of her unforgettable qualities. Well written and full of suspense, this memoir stands out from a host of others by the eventful series of circumstances, the resourcefulness of the author, and above all, the combination of sheer luck and personal ingenuity.