My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

“Suddenly war broke out. I was awakened in the middle of the night. All the lights were on as my father said goodbye to us, dressed in the uniform of the Polish army. When he returned from defeat a few weeks later, everything collapsed. My father died, my grandfather died. The Russians occupied eastern Poland and took over half of our large house. We no longer had a nanny or maid. My mother had to work. My mother and my sister did the best they could to shield me. In a world that had lost all sense of stability, they were my only remaining anchor. “When I was six, in the summer of 1941, the Barbarossa operation began right under our house, which was built on the banks of the Wisla River. I remember the windows shattering, firebombs, the amazing might of Nazi Germany. And within hours, we saw long convoys of terrified Russian prisoners of war. A few months later we were transported to the ghetto. The transition was abrupt: from our grand house to a nook in the ghetto, with its terrible overcrowding, its stench, the hunger. “Then came the Actions. The ghetto was liquidated in stages, and each time it was a different sort of hunt. I remember when we ourselves were hunted. My mother, Ada, and I hid for three days in an underground hole, some sort of cave. There were a few other people hiding with us, while outside, the ghetto was being decimated. There was a slit through which I watched the hunt. I saw men being shot, children being shot. I was a child of six hiding undergroun...