Breaking from the KGB: Warsaw Ghetto Fighter, Intelligence Officer, Defector to the West

There are astonishments in store for readers of this posturing, self-important WW II memoir by a Polish Jew: his apologia for the Red Army halt at the Vistula during the Warsaw uprising (this from an author who stresses his abhorrence of Communists yet remained prosperously in their employ until the mid-'50s); claims of secret knowledge about the infamous Katyn Forest massacre of thousands of Polish officers. Shainberg, born in Warsaw in 1919, writes with questionably selective memory and vague historical reference as he recalls his boyhood in a well-to-do Orthodox Jewish family; his underground activities during the Nazi occupation and his assumed identity as a gentile; his elevation in the ranks of the Polish secret service and his military training in Moscow; his brief emigration to Israel en route to New Jersey. At the core of the book is Shainberg's revelation that the Russians are answerable for Katyn, ""documented'' by his transcription of the diary of a commander at the Katyn prison camp, which he copied some 40 years ago. Photos. (March 15)