Night Voices: Heard in the Shadow of Hitler and Stalin

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Night Voices is set in Poland in the years before, during, and after
World War II. It tells the story of Stasia Alapin Rubilowicz and the
people around her. Stasia, a middle-class Jew who was brought up to be
patriotic, non-religious, and assimilated, is forced to confront her
racial identity on a number of occasions: as a student before the war,
during the horrors of the Nazi occupation, and finally when faced with
the failure of the communist state that had promised to rid the country
of injustice and bigotry.

The book is based largely on interviews with Stasia, her second husband
Mietek, her son Peter, and her close friend Alina. Stasia describes how
her life was shattered by the Nazi invasion. She recounts the anguish of
life in the Warsaw Ghetto, her escape from it, her survival on the run,
the fortunes of her son, her betrayal to the Gestapo, and her rescue
from prison by Christian Polish friends who ignored the risk to their
own lives. In the second half of the book, we meet Mietek and Alina, who
describe their own experiences in Poland during and after the war, their
hopes for the future, and their later disillusionment with the communist
regime—a situation which left all four no alternative but to leave
Poland and start new lives elsewhere.

There are many books recounting the fate of Polish Jews before and
during the Holocaust. This is the first I have encountered that
describes the situation of some of the survivors who chose to remain in
Poland after 1945. The author presents her interviewees’ stories with
compassion and objectivity, and she has clearly done a good deal of
supplementary research as well. As historian Piotr Wrobel notes on the
dust jacket, Night Voices is “a precious primary source to everyone
interested in the delicate and controversial connection between
communism and the Jews.”