Light in Darkness by Albert Marrin - OPTIONAL

Light in Darkness by Albert Marrin, 388 pages. NON-FICTION  Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House), 2019. $20.  

Content: Language: PG-13 (8 swears); Mature Content: G; Violence: R  

BUYING ADVISORY: ADULTS – OPTIONAL  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

This is a history of the violence inflicted on the Warsaw Ghetto and the Jews of Poland.  Woven throughout the chronological telling of the violence is the story of an amazing humanitarian named Janusz Korczak.  Korczak loved children and helped run an orphanage, which he tried to protect during the Holocaust.  Eventually, Korczak and his orphans were claimed by Nazi hatred.  Even though Korczak had influential friends who tried to help him escape, he wouldn’t leave his children.  

This is a hard and horrifyingly graphic telling of the violence exacted on the Polish Jewish people.  I loved everything about Korczak, but his story was a small part of this account.  I’ve never read such a violent unrelenting telling of the Holocaust.  I’m not saying this book doesn’t have its place but it’s a brutal read. The content includes torture, cold-blooded murder of children and babies, horrible degrading abuse, graphic descriptions of death and other appalling acts of violence.  

Reviewer, C. Peterson