Cyankali (Sam) – Fun Yidishn Lebn Untern Natsye Rezhim (“Cyankali Sam – Jewish Life Under the Nazi Regime”), by Holocaust survivor and ghetto fighter Rachmiel (Roman) Grinshpan. Schwabach, 1948. First edition. Extremely rare.
A powerful testimony published in January 1948 in the town of Schwabach, near Nuremberg, under the publishing license of the American Occupation Zone in Germany. The book was printed in Yiddish using the Latin alphabet (romanization), a linguistic choice that represents a fascinating typological feature of She’erit Ha-Pletah literature in postwar Europe. This approach resulted both from technological limitations and the shortage of Hebrew typefaces in local German printing houses, as well as from a desire to make the text accessible to as wide a readership as possible in the immediate aftermath of the war. With poignant historical sensitivity, the book recounts the fate of the Jews of Warsaw and its surrounding areas from the outbreak of the war through their catastrophic destruction, presenting a detailed panoramic account of daily life in the ghetto, survival strategies and smuggling routes on the “Aryan side, ” as well as key figures in the Jewish leadership and community, including Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Judenrat. The volume incorporates authentic and harrowing photographs from the ghetto and the combat zones, together with reproductions of Nazi antisemitic posters and propaganda, accompanied by a sober and perceptive commentary that exposes the mechanisms of German propaganda and deception. Beyond documenting suffering and loss, the book devotes considerable attention to the spirit of resistance, the formation of the Jewish underground organizations, the planning of the uprising, and the determined fighting amid the ruins of the burning ghetto.
The cover was designed and illustrated by the author’s second wife, Mira Maneskin, an artist and survivor of the Vilna Ghetto. As explained in the text, the symbolic illustration depicts the Nazi swastika as a menacing green demonic dragon with outstretched claws hovering above the barbed-wire fences of the ghetto. Standing defiantly before it is a solitary Jew wearing the Yellow Star on his chest, his fist clenched and raised in refusal to surrender as he wages a determined struggle for survival against the Nazi monster. It is one of the important publications produced within the Displaced Persons community in Germany in 1948.
Extremely rare. Only two copies are recorded in the WorldCat global library catalog.
159 pages. Former library copy. Front cover reinforced with adhesive tape. Minor wear to the cover Good condition.
