The testimony of survivors is the ultimate
refutation of claims that the Holocaust did not occur. In this profoundly
honest Holocaust memoir, Michel Mielnicki takes us from the pleasures and
charms of pre-war Polish Jewry (now entirely lost) into some of the darkest
places of the twentieth century.One of
the few survivors of Birkenau - not a concentration camp but an actual death
camp - Mielnicki tells his story with great courage and attention to truthful
detail. In his home town of Wasilkow, Poland, he describes how pogroms, which
began as small acts of anti-Semitism, led to mass murders and expulsions.
Mielnicki also adds new material to the neglected history of Soviet rule in
Poland from September 1939 to June
1941.Mielnicki's account of life in the camps of
Birkenau, Buna, Mittelbau-Dora and Belsen is at times harrowing, but the
personal qualities that helped him to survive when all human dignity had
apparently been erased creates a powerfully redeeming human drama. Bialystok to
Birkenau is a co-publication with the Vancouver Holocaust Education
Centre.