Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in World War II

by Judy Rakowsky Narrated by Judy Rakowsky

Overview

Villages of Poland hide the lost secrets of World War II



1944: Heavy footfalls thud on the road on a rainy May night. A band of gunmen scour a hilltop farm, acting on rumors that it harbors a Jewish family. For 18 months, the Rozeneks have been hiding safely, but their luck is about to run out. Only one from the family of six will live to see the sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Hena Rozenek shelters in the woods until morning . . . and then she runs.



Forty years later: Holocaust survivor Sam Rakowski Ron has lived in the United States for decades, never thinking he could return to the Polish village he fled as a teenager. But now he's ready to talk about what he heard, what he saw, and what he knows about two separate families of cousins who were his neighbors, and presumably were killed during the war. The story Poland presents to the world is that Poles saved more Jews than citizens of any other nation, that any murders in Poland were committed by Nazis and Nazis alone. But Sam, while defending his countrymen, suspects a painful truth. The stories he shares with his younger cousin, Judy, an investigative journalist, send them off on a decades-long journey unlike any other to find out what happened to the Rozenek family and ultimately reveal the secrets the Polish government is still desperate to keep.

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile

Judy Rakowsky recounts her thirty-year search for her long-lost relative, Hena, the only survivor of a family that was killed one night in Poland near the end of WWII. Investigative journalist Rakowsky has the perfect skills to follow her older cousin, Sam, a Holocaust survivor, on this journey. Rakowsky candidly expresses her frustration with waiting for translations, Sam's occasional dismissals of her inquiries, and false leads--all of which led to endless attempts to find Hena. While unsuccessful at the intended task, Rakowsky uncovers and trumpets a truth denied in Poland: that many Jews were murdered not by Nazis, but by Polish resistance fighters. Her voice is vehement when revealing that surprising truth and the stigmas that continue. S.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

"Riveting. A powerful, inspiring book which takes us to the heart of darkness in search of fates of Jews who tried to survive in hiding, in Poland, during the Holocaust. Jews in the Garden uncovers the long-forgotten, horrible, deaths at the hands of neighbors, and records the painstaking, decades-long effort to restore and to preserve the memory of the past. Judy Rakowsky’s book is a must read for all of us who care about the history of the Holocaust and about the preservation of memory of the Jewish catastrophe." — Jan Grabowski, PhD, author of the prize-winning Hunt for Jews and Night Without End

"An engrossing, engagingly written, highly researched account of a journey to find out the truth of what happened to a specific family during the Holocaust." — Library Journal STARRED Review

"Part memoir, part thriller." — NPR's Book of the Day

"Rakowsky has written a moving and sometimes shocking book that often reads like a thriller." — The New York Times

"An intriguing look into a little-understood and largely unrecognized part of Holocaust history." — Kirkus Reviews

"A very well written book; an informative and instructive reading." — Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

"Rakowsky’s prose is the equal of any novelist… A thrilling blend of the personal and the historical." — Booklist

"Jews in the Garden reads like the best of narrator-guided murder-mysteries. But in this case the who-done-it is real, chilling, and makes clear why today's Polish government is so determined to keep its bloody Holocaust-era secrets." — Larry Tye, New York Times bestselling author

Library Journal

★ 06/16/2023

Rakowsky leveraged her award-winning investigative journalism skills to help her older cousin, a Holocaust survivor, learn more about their relatives whom, they had been told, had neighbors in their Polish hometown who helped hide them from the Nazis. But their family was never heard from again, and the two wanted to know what happened to them. The author and her cousin went on a decades-long journey to speak to former neighbors. That developed into something akin to a global detective story. Rakowsky utilized primary source materials and searched for people who had firsthand information about their family. At nearly every stage of the process, a painful truth emerges: many people in Poland were deeply complicit in the atrocities of the Holocaust, which compelled her to detail Poland's involvement. VERDICT An engrossing, engagingly written, highly researched account of a journey to find out the truth of what happened to a specific family during the Holocaust. A fantastic title to give to readers interested in Jewish, European, and World War II history.—Jacqueline Parascandola

AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile

Judy Rakowsky recounts her thirty-year search for her long-lost relative, Hena, the only survivor of a family that was killed one night in Poland near the end of WWII. Investigative journalist Rakowsky has the perfect skills to follow her older cousin, Sam, a Holocaust survivor, on this journey. Rakowsky candidly expresses her frustration with waiting for translations, Sam's occasional dismissals of her inquiries, and false leads--all of which led to endless attempts to find Hena. While unsuccessful at the intended task, Rakowsky uncovers and trumpets a truth denied in Poland: that many Jews were murdered not by Nazis, but by Polish resistance fighters. Her voice is vehement when revealing that surprising truth and the stigmas that continue. S.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2023-05-09
One Holocaust survivor’s search for answers in his homeland.

Former investigative journalist Rakowsky documents the efforts of her cousin Sam to discover the fates of his relatives in Poland after the Holocaust. Sam had been among the workers who survived the era through the now-famous Oskar Schindler factory. After the fall of communism, he made his way back to Poland for what was to be the first of several visits in an attempt to trace the lives of various family members. The author accompanied him on several of these trips and provides detailed firsthand accounts of what transpired. Over the years, Rakowsky also used her journalistic skills to contribute to the search for answers via friends, public records, and local officials. Much of the book focuses on the rural county of Kazimierza, near Kraków, where Sam grew up. Upon returning, his first hope was to find cousin Hena, who was rumored to have survived the slaughter of her family after being discovered in hiding. This first search, however, led to a different discovery: the burial place of another family of relatives, the Dulas. Also routed out of hiding and murdered, the Dulas were buried in a small grave together on the property where they hid. For decades after, locals taunted the family living there about the “Jews in the garden” on their property. Both the Dulas and Hena’s family, the Rożeńeks, were murdered not by Germans but by fellow Poles near the end of the war. An important part of the author’s investigation involved the reality of bands of Polish resistance soldiers who systematically searched for and killed Jews in hiding just prior to Soviet occupation. In the process of discovery, both the author and her cousin came to find that memory of the war in Poland is a sensitive, selective, and politicized topic.

An intriguing look into a little-understood and largely unrecognized part of Holocaust history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159887337
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	975,643

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