Scroll of Agony; The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan

Kaplan, Chaim Aron, and Katsh, Abraham I. (Translator and Editor)

Edité par The Macmillan Company, New York, 1965

A propos de cet article

350, [2] pages. . Endpaper maps Occasional footnotes. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. From an on-line posting on Abraham I. Katsh: "Polish-born American educator and researcher who was a scholar of Judaica and was credited with the addition of modern Hebrew to the curricula of American colleges; during the Cold War he persuaded Soviet officials to allow him to study and microfilm--and thus make available to scholars--thousands of Jewish documents they had seized and hidden away (b. Aug. 10, 1908, Poland--d. July 21, 1998, New York, N.Y.)." Derived from a Kirkus review: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan covers the period from Germany's invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, to August 4, 1942. Then Kaplan, destitute and with few hopes left, awaited his turn to be "expelled," worried mainly now about the survival of the little stack of notebooks in which, in "clear and beautiful" Hebrew script "with no erasures," he had recorded the Jewish martyrdom. Kaplan, a distinguished teacher and Hebraicist, was born in White Russia, and one of the special virtues of his testimony is to be found in the fact that, although he had lived in Warsaw for 40 years, he identified neither with Poland nor with Polish Jewry. Thus, though his own fate is bound up with the tragedy all around him, he seems able to observe it with a degree of objectivity which makes his picture all the sharper and stronger. Dr. Katsh has done an excellent job of capturing the terrible spirit of the time and place in clear, tense, quiet prose. Translation of Megilat yisurin. Originally published as The Scroll of Agony, this is a classic depiction of the Holocaust. Carefully hidden and preserved in a kerosene can, twenty years after the annihilation of the Warsaw Ghetto, it was discovered. It is an extraordinary first-person record of the Nazi occupation and destruction of Warsaw's Jewish community. Excerpts from The Jewish Virtual Library biography "KAPLAN, CHAIM ARON (1880 1942), educator and diarist of the Holocaust. Kaplan was born in Gorodishche, Belorussia.In 1902 he settled in Warsaw, where he founded a pioneering elementary Hebrew school, of which he was principal for 40 years.Kaplan visited the United States in 1921. In 1936 he visited Israel, intending to settle there in order to be with his two children who had emigrated there earlier, but was unable to obtain a position and returned to Warsaw.Kaplan's Judaism seems to have been based on national and historic allegiance, rather than on traditional observance.Kaplan began a personal diary as early as 1933. This trained him for the mission he undertook at the beginning of World War II, to devote all his efforts to preserving a record for posterity.his intention of objectivity is carried out with remarkable tenacity, and with increasing dedication in the face of hardship, as the dreadful events increased his own physical and emotional suffering and his anguish at the mounting tragedy around him.The diary has been preserved in toto, having been smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto before its total destruction. Kaplan himself was largely responsible for the miracle of its preservation. In 1942, when he knew that the Nazi noose was around his neck, he gave it to a Jewish friend named Rubinsztejn, who was working daily at forced labor outside the ghetto, returning each evening. Rubinsztejn smuggled the notebooks out one by one, handing them over to a Pole. Kaplan's Hebrew script is clear and beautiful, with no erasures, a remarkable feat in view of the almost impossible conditions under which it was written. At the worst moments, on the brink of destruction, Kaplan sustained himself with the hope that the diary would be saved. His own future worried him little; the fate of his chronicle was his main concern. This concern increased in proportion with the daily atrocities of the Nazis.He wrote several times a day in order to include every detail of the horror surrounding him.he writes in his last entry (August 4, 194.

N° de réf. du vendeur 69010

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Scroll of Agony; The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan
• Éditeur: The Macmillan Company, New York
• Date de parution: 1965
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Illustrateur: William R. Simmons (Author Photograph), Morgan (Ma
• Édition: First Printing [Stated].
• État de l'article: Very good.
• État de la jaquette: Very good, in a plastic sleeve
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Holocaust
  • Zionism
  • Gestapo