Silent is the Vistula – the story of the Warsaw uprising by Irena Orska – first English edition translated by Marta Erdman (noted as “First edition” on title page). New York, London, Toronto 1946. Hardcover with rare original dust jacket.
Description of Sixty-three days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Warsaw born resistance fighter Irena Orska – from the commanders of the Polish resistance unit in the ghetto “Silent is the Vistula”. The author documents the heroic battles in the ghetto during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as the Germans slaughtered a quarter of Warsaw’s population. Fighting alongside her 13 year old daughter, Irena was responsible for women’s military positions in the part of Warsaw bordering on the Vistula River (hence the unit’s name). She spent many days crawling through Warsaw’s sewers on all fours in impossible conditions. Over the war years she served as officer, nurse, and Red Cross worker. Irena married young and was widowed at 19 with a six month old child. When WWII broke out she joined the Polish underground and was active throughout the five years of German occupation of Warsaw, participating in the ghetto battles and witnessing the murder of many of its inhabitants by German cannon fire, the fires set by Germans on every corner, the bombing of the Red Cross station, saving the lives of many gravely wounded on the brink of death, warning many to flee from ghetto basements to the south as Germans approached to massacre them, thus saving many lives, especially in basement 23 where she directed many women with children out of the ghetto to the city center via secret escape routes hidden from the Nazis. During the uprising she was captured by the Germans and sent to Pruszkow camp, at one point transferred to the hospital camp at Piastów where she worked as a nurse. She managed to escape Poland under cover of the German retreat using a forged ID as an American citizen’s wife, arriving in the U.S. by ship on February 12, 1945.
[6], 275, [1] p. Light tears on the top and bottom of the dust jacket at the spine. Good condition.
