Scenes from a Disturbed Childhoo

Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union destroyed the normalcy of Czerniawski's childhood in Poland. Or did they? Czerniawski (who edited The Mature Laurel ) lacked the standard adjectives of adulthood as a child, and this forced him to accept life as it occurred and to search for meaning in the details. The poet's memoir of his youth is a haunting tale of a child's ability to mature amidst inhumanity, tragedy, dislocation, poverty and war. He deftly weaves world history on a large scale with a child's view of such momentous events: `` . . . we rush for a train on a blackened platform, I fall and my nose bleeds profusely.'' The movement of his family through German- and Soviet-occupied Poland, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon and on into postwar England provides the framework off which Czerniawski hangs reminiscences like jewels for the reader to pluck: stealing a potato and cooking it in gasoline-soaked sand; being amazed that a teacher in wartime Jerusalem wears a different suit every week; watching a Rita Hayworth movie with both Polish and Hebrew subtitles, one of which says ``Darling, will you be my wife?'' while the other reads ``Me Big Chief no like White Man.'' Photos. (Aug.)