Rulka Langer "The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt."
War Through a Woman's Eyes, 1939-1940.
September 1, 1939 is an infamous day in 20th Century history, the start of World War II. But how many of us today know what happened when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, unleashing its military furor for the first time?
Rare eyewitness account of early, chaotic days of WWII―Nazi Germany invasion of Poland in September 1939, Siege of Warsaw which lasted until September 27, and the first months of criminal German occupation―written by a young working mother. Rulka Langer's eye for detail and lively storytelling bring to life, from her unique vantage point, the opening chapter of the struggle between good and evil which ultimately engulfed the entire globe.
But nothing could prepare her or anyone who lived through the German blitzkrieg, and the war that followed. The destruction was shockingly fast and Rulka describes it day by day, each day that seems like weeks―the bombs, the bomb shelters, the fires, the scarcity of food, horse carcasses in the street stripped to the bone by hungry people, so many deaths that people were buried in empty lots all over the city, refugees from border towns coming to Warsaw, Varsovians escaping the city for points further east, the evacuation of the leaders and of the Bank of Poland, the personal horrors of women and children trying to survive.
When the war started, Rulka, like many of her fellow Varsovians, was confident. The Poles would stop the Germans; the British and French will help. But the news from the front was grim. The Polish army couldn't hold back the invading Germans whose tanks and planes targeted peaceful villages, residential areas and unarmed civilians as fiercely as they did military targets. The allies did not show up; instead, the criminal Soviet Red Army joined the criminal Germans, and attacked from the east.
In a gripping, fast-paced narrative, Langer describes the anticipation and dread, the panic and confusion, people in motion―to escape the bombing of the city; to escape the burning of peaceful villages and the strafing of civilians on the run; refugees laden down with possessions; refugees forced out of homes with nothing...
Langer describes the devastation of the city, but she writes primarily about people. People in their infinite variety, with their infinite ability to surprise. Only the very naïve would try to predict their own behavior in a crisis. She witnessed heroism in people she had always considered timid, and cowardice among people who, before the war, had flaunted their boldness.
Rulka published her book in 1942, after arriving in the United States, before the U.S. entered the war, before anyone knew how long the war would last and how it would be resolved, and before the horrors of the concentration camps and the German Nazi genocide of Jews, gypsies and others would be revealed.
Anyone who's ever read memoirs written during or immediately after the war knows how very different they are from those written many years later. The writing is vivid, unembellished, adrenalin charged. Memories have not yet faded, been tampered with. There is no editorializing. War is an experience unlike any other. Nobody comes out of it unchanged. When these experiences are recorded by gifted writers―and Rulka Langer certainly was that―they are at once harrowing, inspiring and breathtaking.
Hardcover without DJ. 1942.
Used book. Very good, nice and clean.