Isaac's Army (75 page)

16
“A lot of our misfortunes were solved after the war because they remembered what we had done for them”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 357.

17
“We were firm friends”
Ibid.

18
an estimated 11,500
Warsaw Jews had survived the war
Paulsson,
Secret City
, p. 198.

19
Eventually, more than 150,000
Polish Jews returned from the Soviet Union
Jan T. Gross,
Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz
(New York: Random House, 2007), p. 43.

20
raising the total number of Jews in Poland to more than 200,000
Beres and Burnetko,
Marek Edelman
, p. 220.

21
“Why are you cooperating with those sons of bitches?”
Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

22
“They were best friends”
Ibid.

23
“We had differences of opinion”
Mark Edelman, author interview, Lodz, May 2007.

24
Some 15,000
Communist functionaries were killed in the immediate postwar
Gross,
Fear
, p. 28.

25
In the west … six hundred thousand people died
Timothy Snyder, “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality,”
New York Review of Books
, July 16, 2009.

26
sixty thousand Home Army officers were arrested by the NKVD
Zbigniew Blazynski,
Mowi Jozef Swiatlo: Za Kulisami Bezpieki I Partii 1940–1955
(Warsaw: LTW, 2003), p. 130.

27
“Isaac and Zivia had changed”
Assuntino and Goldkorn,
Straznik
, p. 111.

28
“I was alone and I didn’t know what to do”
Ibid.
387 “There was no future there for us”
Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

29
“The United States did nothing for Jews during the war”
Ibid.

30
“Hide, hide, the Jews are coming for you”
Beres and Burnetko,
Marek Edelman
, p. 235.

31
Eliza was “not for sale”
Ibid.

32
“In America she had a bicycle, a pony, a boat”
Ibid., p. 238.

C
HAPTER
42: N
EXT
Y
EAR IN
J
ERUSALEM

1
“I said bitter things at the conference”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 601.

2
“I thought we still had something to do in Europe”
Ratheiser-Rotem,
Kazik
, p. 150.

3
“It was even said that he had a direct line to Stalin”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 673.

4
“People were shocked. ‘Where are all these Jews coming from?’ they asked”
Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

5
Estimates by American scholars
Gross,
Fear
, p. 28.

6
“Most of the attacks were pure and simple banditry”
Marek Edelman, author interview, Lodz, May 2007.

7
Jews were “victims of the atmosphere created by the National Armed Forces”
Assuntino and Goldkorn,
Straznik
, p. 116.

8
Nonetheless, they occupied perhaps as much as half of the senior posts
Gross,
Fear
, p. 228.

9
“It was already bad enough [for Jews after the war], but [Berman’s agency] made the situation worse”
Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

10
“Gentlemen—a great catastrophe”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 660.

11
“Kielce was a ghost town”
Ibid., p. 661.

12
who received him immediately and with great courtesy
Ibid.

13
informed him that the kidnapping charges were nothing but a “provocation”
Gross,
Fear
, p. 85.

14
“I assembled about forty Jews in one room and didn’t let the soldiers in”
http://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Kielce.html
.

15
“Uniformed soldiers and a number of civilians forced their way into the building”
Ibid.

16
“I said I personally would take responsibility”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 666.

17
“We were accepted without delay. I’ll never forget Spychalski’s reaction”
Ibid., p. 667.

18
“any action which might indicate that the authorities were siding with the Jews”
Gross,
Fear
, p. 99.

19
“Do not under any circumstances use the northern borders”
Zuckerman,
Surplus of Memory
, p. 667.

20
“Could Spychalski, who was acting as Minister of Defense, have decided such a thing on his own?”
Ibid., p. 671.

21
“Perhaps ‘high politics’ was at work here”
Ibid., p. 675.

22
By October 1946, seventy thousand Jews left Poland for Palestine … By December, the number had risen to 115,500
http://www.Jewishvirtuallibrary.org
.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After working for
The New York Times
in Warsaw in the early 1990s, M
ATTHEW
B
RZEZINSKI
served as Moscow correspondent for
The Wall Street Journal
. Following the September 11 attacks, he covered homeland security as a contributing writer for
The New York Times Magazine
. He is also the author of
Casino Moscow, Fortress America
, and
Red Moon Rising
. He lives in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts.

www.isaacsarmybook.com