Fleeing Soviet-occupied Vilnius in 1940, a girl and her parents arrive in German-occupied Poland.
This child's-eye account brings wartime and refugee experiences vividly to life.
On the Run in Occupied Poland presents the daily wartime experiences of a Polish-Catholic girl. Written as an adult by Grażyna Gross, née Połtowicz (1931-2022), this collection of vignettes communicates uncannily the perspective of the child Gross was at the time, while also conveying her adult thoughts on the strategies human beings deploy to stay alive as refugees in times of war.
This unusual contribution to the history of Occupied Poland highlights the fates of dispossessed Polish families as a result of both the Russian Revolution and the division of Poland in World War II.
Providing concrete details of lived experience during these monumental events, this ""paramemoir"" constitutes a type of life-writing that goes beyond a single individual. It is a life story with enhancements in the form of factual footnotes, rare photographic evidence, a map, and contextualizing commentary in the form of essays by Joyce Gross, the author's daughter, Irene Kacandes, a professor and friend, and Aleksandra Szczepan, a scholar educated in Kraków, the city in which Gross spent the longest period of the war.
A compelling source for further research into how the occupation of Poland from both East and West affected non-Jewish Poles, this book will be treasured by historians as well as ordinary readers for its surprising insights into a difficult refugee childhood that overshadowed a whole life.
A Prefatory Note from the Editor Map On the Run in Occupied Poland: Tales of a Refugee Childhood by Grażyna Gross Chapter One, Maria and Mirek Chapter Two, Heniuś Chapter Three, Maybe Not a Story Chapter Four, Letter to an Unknown Man Chapter Five, The Shoemaker's Son Chapter Six, The Doctor's Daughter Chapter Seven, The Fortune Teller Chapter Eight, The Root Canal Chapter Nine, The Day Papa Left Chapter Ten, Tereska Chapter Eleven, The Picture Album, Part One Chapter Twelve, Half-Boarders Chapter Thirteen, Józefina's Mistress Chapter Fourteen, The Psychic Chapter Fifteen, The Gloves Chapter Sixteen, The Ring Chapter Seventeen A Boy Chapter Eighteen, Uncle Kot Chapter Nineteen, A Dinner Chapter Twenty, A Christmas Story Chapter Twenty-One, Letter to Józefina Chapter Twenty-Two, The Sled Chapter Twenty-Three, The Watch Chapter Twenty-Four, Typhus Chapter Twenty-Five, Justyna Chapter Twenty-Six, Mrs. Kraus Chapter Twenty-Seven, The Picture Album, Part Two Chapter Twenty-Eight, Peace Chapter Twenty-Nine, A Night in Regensburg Chapter Thirty Evhen Chapter Thirty-One, School Chapter Thirty-Two, EH Chapter Thirty-Three, The Girl from Furth Chapter Thirty-Four, Father Zeisel Chapter Thirty-Five, Mama Afterwords Mothers and Daughters-and Grandmothers, by Joyce Gross What is Historic? What is Heroic?, by Aleksandra Szczepan My Friend the Writer, by Irene Kacandes Appendices Timeline Notes to the Tales Family Photos Extract from the Polish Notebooks Card from Henryk Połtowicz at Gross-Rosen to his daughter Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index
IRENE KACANDES is Professor Emerita of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. GRAŻYNA GROSS (1931-2022) survived displacement and refugeedom as a young Polish girl during the Second World War and spent most of her adult life in Ithaca, NY. JOYCE GROSS is a database and web programmer for the UC Berkeley Natural History Museums. Her tribute to her mother is at https://joycegross.com/note/2022/04/25/grazyna. ALEKSANDRA SZCZEPAN is a post-doc researcher on a joint initiative of the Professorship for Slavic Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Potsdam, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, and the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam, DE.
