Inside Liberated Poland - A first report on the destroyed cities of Poland published even before the end of the war by journalist Anna Louise Strong who toured the liberated areas of Poland between November - December 1944 and witnessed both the immense destruction and the beginning of rehabilitation in the region that sustained the greatest destruction in history. Anna was the first American journalist who heard testimonies from Jewish Holocaust survivors who survived the Nazi inferno. Published by the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, New York - 1945, first edition, English. Dedicated copy by the author.
"The first impression of today's Poland is the amazing chaos left behind by the Germans. The utter wreckage and ruin of human life". Writer and lecturer Anna Louise Strong was the first American who met and spoke with members of the Polish army assisting the Red Army in clearing Poland of the German occupier during her trip in the liberated areas of Poland between November - December 1944, even before the end of the war. Anna was among the first to meet Spychalski - the head of urban planning in Warsaw before the war, who assisted in organizing the Warsaw resistance in 1939 and was one of the first to organize the partisan army. She also met young Helena Jaworska, then 22 years old, one of the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who was the first to transmit news about the ghetto uprising to the Red Army through an escape route from the sewer tunnels - an act that allowed assistance from the Red Army to the rebels. She also met some politicians in the provisional Polish government. In her book she reports on the immense scale of destruction left behind by the Germans in Poland, writing that "Warsaw, for example, no longer exists as a city" and that "In the city, the largest pile of ruins anywhere on earth... Not a single house survived intact". She reports on the situation in the cities of Lodz, Czestochowa and Krakow. In Radzyń she met Marian Potepczyk who led a group of 54 partisans and was tasked with reorganizing the Radzyń region at the end of the war. His role was to organize street cleaning, mass burials, prevention of looting and arson, and collection of classified Gestapo materials from which they learned the fate of many victims. The situation in Polish cities was so dire that the Polish Committee of National Liberation actually had to rebuild Poland from scratch. Anne describes in detail the activities of the Liberation Committee in reconstruction efforts with an organized division of labor for people arriving from all over the world. In Lodz she met Jewish doctor Albert Mazur - one of 800 survivors from the Jewish population of a quarter million before the war, who told her that when the Red Army arrived "we kissed their feet, and not just their feet but also their horses' hooves". Mazur hid in a secret tunnel dug in the ghetto and thus survived. In Lodz, she witnessed the most shocking sight she had seen in her life, as she describes - thousands of charred bodies lying in contorted positions near the local prison, with masses of civilians weeping and searching for loved ones among the corpses. There she also met Frank Szarenski, who miraculously survived when shot with a group of Jews by feigning death. Anne also managed to reach the Polish front and spent three days with the Polish army amidst the final battles against the Germans, which she documents in her book.
Anna Louise Strong [1885-1970] - Writer, lecturer, journalist, activist known for her reports and support of communist movements in the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China. Published countless books about the Soviet Union. In November and December 1944 she undertook an eight-week journey through the liberated areas of Poland and was the first American to meet and speak with members of the Polish army assisting the Red Army in clearing Poland of the German occupier.
47 [1] p. Very good condition.
