This memoir by the late Ainsztein, the author of the classic histories Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe
and The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt
who died in 1981, is an honest, compelling set of recollections. A self-avowed Marxist, early in his Polish adolescence Ainsztein eschewed the Communist movement: "The moment I saw Communism as a religion, I was lost to it." Denied entry to Polish universities as a Jew, Ainsztein emigrated to Belgium before the war and studied medicine. Caught up in the German blitzkrieg
of western Europe in 1940, he eventually evaded the German noose tightening and escaped to Spain, where he was interned for more than a year, hearing, among other things, the applause of fellow Polish prisoners when they learned of the number of Jews killed in 1942. (Asides throughout remarking on Polish anti-Semitism can make for difficult reading.) Upon arriving in England in 1943, Ainsztein pointedly refused to serve with the Polish exile armed forces, insisting instead on joining the Royal Air Force, believing his own combat flying "allowed me to falsely claim the credit for having risked my life at a time when my own family had known every possible terror and death itself." (Ainsztein had learned by then that his family had perished in the camps.) Tales of combat flying, including parachuting from his stricken bomber and downing a German jet as an upper gunner, are vivid and more thoughtful than most others in the genre ("I... took for granted the long silences, unuttered hopes, clumsy curses, and swearwords that were meant to replace terms such as death, terror, determination, and hope"). The book closes at war's end, with Ainsztein returning to Dieppe, "treading unclean soil soaked with Jewish blood." (June)
Forecast:An uncommon combination of Holocaust and combat memoir, this book should be a draw to readers of both genres. But without Ainsztein to promote the book, it may have difficulty reaching them, unless scholars and others interested in Ainsztein's work pick it up and start talking about it.
