A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto

A secondary-school teacher born to Hasidic parents, Lewin helped build and maintain the underground archives in the Warsaw ghetto and is presumed to have died just before or during the tragic ghetto uprising. His diary, translated into English for the first time, is a powerful and important document that rings with the moral force and literary skill of an Old Testament prophet. The sections preserved cover only the period from April 1942 to January 1943, but Lewin hears all, sees all, records all: the starvation and disease, the desperate grasping for signs of hope; the cooperation among Poles and Jews; the children smuggling food; the slaughter of Jews in surrounding communities and then in the sealed-off Warsaw ghetto; the daily deportations to the Treblinka death camp (which took his wife from him). Lewin's absolute clarity of vision gives this grim document compelling power. (Mar.)