”Bitter Freedom – Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor”

KJ, 16 November 2016
In November, the Polish version of the memoirs of Holocaust Survivor, Jafa Wallach, was released. Together with her family, she hid for two years with the Zwonarz family, a Polish family in Lesku in Podkarpacie. This publication represents an importance advance in the knowledge of the fate of the Jews during the occupation of south-eastern Poland.

The book, Bitter Freedom – Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, is a record of the realities of occupation from the perspective of a victim of Nazism. Jafa Wallach tells of the tragic fate of her family, of her time in a camp in Zasław, her escape from there and then finally her difficult time in hiding with the Zwonarz family. As well as Jafa Wallach’s memoirs, the publication includes pieces by her daughter, Rena Bernstein and her sister, Helena Manaster-Ramer. The foreword is written by Elżbieta Rącz who writes about the situation of the Jews in the Lesk and Sanok districts in the years 1939–1942.

The book was launched, at the end of November 2012 in the Library of the ks. Bronisław Markiewicz Higher State School of Technical Economics, by the Dean, Prof. nadzw. dr hab. Wacław Wierzbieniec. Others to take part were Dr Elżbieta Rączy and Romuald Zwonarz, son of Józef and Franciszka Zwonarz who, during the time of the holocaust, had hidden Jafa Wallach and her family.

The book was published by the IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) and was co-financed by the ks. Bronisław Markiewicz Higher State School of Technical Economics in Jarosław.

The story of how the Wallach family was hidden by the Zwonarz family can be found here.