Paula's Window: Papa, the Bielski Partisans, and A Life Unexpected

by Paula Burger, Andrea Jacobs (Contributor)

"Paula's Window: Papa, the Bielski Partisans, and A Life Unexpected” is the gripping Holocaust memoir of a Jewish girl’s waking nightmare in a world gone mad and hope regained in the ashes. Artist Paula Burger’s carefree childhood in Novogrudek, Poland, exploded when the Nazis occupied the town in July of 1941. Paula and her family evaded the round ups and executions of thousands of Jews until 1942, when they were discovered by the Germans and forced inside the ghetto, a holding pen of death. Her father eventually escaped and joined the Bielski Partisans in the Naliboki Forest, where he planned to bring his family. One of their neighbors got wind of his activities and informed on him to the Nazis. Unable to locate Paula’s father, the Nazis took her mother away and interrogated her at official headquarters. She told them her husband had disappeared, and denied having children. The Nazis arrested her. Six weeks later, on Yom Kippur, 1942, she was killed. Paula never had a chance to say goodbye. As soon as Paula’s father learned of his wife’s fate, he realized his daughter and son were next. He arranged to smuggle them out of the ghetto and brought them to their new home with the Bielski Partisans in the Naliboki Forest. But no one was safe, especially the children. One night Paula overheard the awful truth: If anything ever happened to her father, his children were expendable. “I loved my father more than life,” Paula writes. “And I knew, one way or another, my life ended with his. Ever since I heard people talking about my brother and me around the campfire, I carried this secret like a bullet in my soul . . . The Bielskis could not risk the lives of hundreds of Jews to save two children.” “After Mama was killed, I wanted to give up,” she writes. “When Papa disappeared for weeks in the forest, I willed myself to die. I guess death didn’t want me. Like the snowflakes of my childhood, we swirl, struggle, collapse — but as long as we breathe, we are commanded to live.” “Paula’s Window, ” written by Paula Burger and Andrea Jacobs, is a haunting chronicle of crushing inhumanity and the tenacity of human love. After reading this book, you will never forget what must be remembered.

Genres: Holocaust, Nonfiction, Memoir

180 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2013

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paula Koladicki was eight years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown of Novogrudek, Poland. She and her family were eventually sent to a ghetto constructed in the center of town. As the situation there worsened, Paula’s father was able to escape and take her to live in the nearby Naliboki forest with the Bielski partisans.

As told to author Andrea Jacobs, the reader is able to hear Paula’s story from a child’s point of view. This true account of her experiences during World War II is a testament to courage and the triumph of the human spirit.

[Robin Tobin (On the back porch reading) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this biography by Holocaust survivor, Paula Berger...

[Sara Giacalone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate to hear Ms. Paula Burger speak last year at the release of this book and was incredibly touched and humbled by her experience, her strength and her sense of humor. Her memoir, Paula's Window: Papa, the Bielski Partisans, and A Life Unexpected is an important, true account of the horror and trauma experienced by her family in WWII. Seen through the eyes of a small 10 year old girl, her account of their struggle to survive in the forest while nearly every one around them wanted to kill them, is profoundly moving and is a story that should be shared again and again. I was particularly touched by the voices of the second- and third- generation Holocaust survivors on how Paula's experience shaped their world.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great little book written by Holocaust survivor Paula Berger. I had the privilege of seeing Paula speak. I have seen other survivors speak and then read their books and found that the presentation and the book were basically the same. Not so for Paula's Window, however. The book is a stirring story of how Paula and her brother survived with their father in the forests of Poland with the Bielski Partisans. Watch Defiance and read this book!

[Dulce Grajeda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book if you want a different story the one that people survived outside not inside camps

[Dottie Resnick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to imagine growing up in this way, and yet she did. Hard to imagine, surviving and yet they did. Paula (and Andrea Jacobs who met with and wrote Paula's story) have managed to give us a book that is insightful and heart-wrenching, showing us all the TRUE survivor spirit. Thank you Paula for sharing your story. It is one that although we know the over view hearing and feeling the details is inspiring and will help to make us never forget.