Barbara Engelking

This would definitely be the definitive text on the Warsaw Ghetto. I doubt there's more than a few shreds of information about the ghetto that aren't in the book. It utilizes every conceivable source, including lots of oral testimonies to memoirs and diaries, etc. Much of the material used to put this book together is unpublished archival stuff that's never seen the light of day before. Photos are sprinkled throughout.

The book is divided not so much chronologically as categorically, with sections like "Commercial Activity in the Ghetto" and "Cultural Life in the Ghetto." Each of these chapters comes with its own appendix and often one or more lists (like, say, a list of businesses and their addresses). Towards the end, it covers the Great Deportation of mid-1942 day by day, then covers the spring 1943 Ghetto Uprising likewise. There's also a list of prominent characters from the ghetto in the back of the book, with short paragraphs explaining who they were, what their backgrounds were, what they did and what their fate was -- if known. But make no mistake: this isn't just an encyclopedia. It's far more detailed than that.

Because this is the definitive text, I would not recommend it to beginners who don't know much about the Warsaw Ghetto. There's so much information, they'd drown in it. There are plenty of other, smaller, books to provide an introduction to the Ghetto. But for serious Holocaust researchers who have read extensively already, this is definitely worth plowing through even if it does take weeks.… (mehr)