The Book of Aron

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My main object here, to quote Marguerite Yourcenar in her Bibliographical Note to her Memoirs of Hadrian, has been “to approach inner reality, if possible, through careful examination of what the documents themselves afford,” and so this novel could not have existed, or would have existed in a much diminished form, without critically important contributions from the following sources: Janusz Korczak’s Ghetto Diary; The Selected Works of Janusz Korczak, Martin Wolins, ed.; Aaron Zeitlin’s prose poem “The Last Walk of Janusz Korczak”; Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Jacob Sloan, ed.; Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak’s The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City; Marta Markowska’s The Ringelblum Archive: Annihilation — Day by Day; Bogdan Wojdowski’s Bread for the Departed; and Dawid Rubinowicz’s The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz. I’m also hugely indebted to To Live with Honor and Die with Honor: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives O. S. (Oneg Shabbath), Joseph Kermish, ed.; The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg-Ringelblum Archive Catalog and Guide, Robert Moses Shapiro and Tadeusz Epsztein, eds.; The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, Alan Adelson, ed.; The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust, Guy Miron and Shlomit Shulhani, eds.; Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto, Michał Grynberg, ed.; Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland Before the Holocaust, Jeffrey Shandler, ed.; From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, eds.; The Last Eyewitness: Children of the Holocaust Speak, Volume 1, Wiktoria Śliwowska, ed., Volume 2, Jakub Gutenbaum and Agnieszka Latała, eds.; Hunger Disease: Studies by the Jewish Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto, Myron Winick, M.D., ed.; The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia, Wendy Lower, ed.; The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staroń, and Josef Kermisz, eds.; and Betty Jean Lifton’s The King of Children. I also found crucially useful Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych’s article “The Last Journey of the Residents and Staff of the Warsaw Orphanage”; Lucjan Dobroszycki’s The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, 1941–1944; Leni Yahil’s The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry 1932–1945; Kurt Grübler’s Journey Through the Night: Jakob Littner’s Holocaust Memoir; Adina Blady Szwajger’s I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children’s Hospital and the Jewish Resistance; Abraham Lewin’s A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, Antony Polonsky, ed.; Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews; Günther Schwarberg’s In the Ghetto of Warsaw: Heinrich Jöst’s Photographs; Hanna Krall’s Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Naomi Samson’s Hide: A Child’s View of the Holocaust; Willy Georg’s In the Warsaw Ghetto: Summer 1941; Jürgen Stroop’s The Stroop Report; Larry Stillman and Morris Goldner’s A Match Made in Hell: The Jewish Boy and the Polish Outlaw Who Defied the Nazis; Manny Drukier’s Carved in Stone: Holocaust Years — A Boy’s Tale; Bernard Gotfryd’s Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust; Lizzie Collingham’s The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food; Joseph Ziemian’s The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square; George Eisen’s Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games Among the Shadows; Rubin Katz’s Gone to Pitchipoï: A Boy’s Desperate Fight for Survival in Wartime; Rochelle G. Saidel’s Mielec, Poland: The Shtetl That Became a Nazi Concentration Camp; Aviad Kleinberg’s article “The Enchantment of Judaism: Israeli Anxieties and Puzzles,” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 3 (spring 2009); Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah; and Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.

The book was also inconceivable without the inspiration, support, and expertise provided by Creaghan Trainor, Daniel Mendelsohn, Edan Dekel, Andrea Barrett, Rebecca Ohm, Rich Remsberg, Marketa Rulikova, Dan Polsby, Tomasz Kuźnar, and Michael Gross; the saving editorial enthusiasm and intelligence provided by Ben George, Reagan Arthur, Jim Rutman, Peter Matson, and Gary Fisketjon; and the research resources provided by Ron Coleman, Vincent Slatt, Caroline Waddell, and Nancy Hartman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Theresa Roy of the National Archives; Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych at the Korczakianum Center of Documentation and Research; Agnieszka Reszka of the Żydowski Instytut Historyczny; Aleksandra Bańkowska and Jan Jagielski at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute; and Justyna Majewska at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. I also have Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Jach and Wojciech Błaszczyk and Monika Oleśko to thank for their help in negotiating Warsaw. And the irrepressible and endlessly informative Alex Dunai to thank for his sheer resourcefulness and expert guidance in both the Polish countryside and the cities.

I also feel enormous humility in the face of the special debt the book owes to the testimonies of Frieda Aaron, Irena Abraham, Fela Abramowicz, Erwin Baum, Israel Berkenwald, Abraham Bomba, Helen Bromberg, Nelly Cesana, Mietek Ejchel, Lily Fenster, Henry Frankel, Simon Friedman, Henry Goldberg, Sam Goldberg, Henia Goldman, Doris Fuchs Greenberg, Marcel Gurner, David Haskil, Josef Himmelblau, Jola Hoffman, David Jakubowski, Erner Jurek, David Kochalski, Andrzej Krauthamer, Sara Lajbowicz, Anne Levy, Anna Lewkowicz, Jakub Michlewicz, Irene and Shimon Noskovicz, Henry Nusbaum, Samuel Offen, Michel Pinkas, Golda Rifka, Anka Rochman, Slama Rotter, Lidia Siciarz, Jack Spiegel, Czerna Sterma, Fela Warschau, Ryszard Weidman, Cyla Wiener, and especially Marian Marzynski.

Finally, I want to single out for special thanks and praise the contributions of those readers who encountered this work in its earliest stages, and whose optimism and rigor helped keep the project afloat: Gary Zebrun, Ron Hansen, and especially Sandra Leong, whose insights, early and late, were a crucial help. And I want most to celebrate my first and final reader, Karen Shepard, who remains fully justified in continuing to inform everyone that she renovates me for the better just about every single day.