Warsaw Testament by Rokhl Auerbach is the astonishing true story about her life as a journalist before, during and after World War II. She was a part of the literary and intellectual community before the German occupation and mass murders of innocents in Poland. She ran a soup kitchen where she was able to serve 2,000 Jews a day. She joined the Oyneg Shabes and Ringelbaum secret archive project which were practical ways of resisting Nazis. Reports, diaries and documents were buried. Living in fear day after day must have been anguish.

Auerbach experienced air raids, bombs, starvation, burning destruction and death all around. Her personal true accounts and stories of others who suffered are impactful and historically important.

I like the perspectives from within the thick of things in the war and then post-war reflections. Auerbach's story is emotive, moving and poignant yet without one iota of self pity. Amongst other things, she wrote about how Germans skilfully used Jews' strengths against them. She knew the power of keeping secret diaries for the future, explored psychological changes resulting from war, described German blitzkrieg tactics, sadly recalled the quick fall of Warsaw and reflected on resistance and moral collapse. She did not gloss over horrendous actions such as slurping up another's vomit and eating lice from your body. Details like the white-shrouded man and famine are difficult to read but crucial to be aware of. Soup kitchen realities were terribly sad.

My sincere thank you to White Goat Press and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this engrossing book. I am grateful for writers such as Auerbach who risked their all to help others and documented their Holocaust experiences. This is true heroism.

Rokhl Auerbach was a survivor, she also studied psychology and passionately supported Yiddish culture, writing for several magazines and newspapers. Warsaw Testament is a palimpsest of the Yiddish and Jewish literary life of pre-Holocaust Poland, life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto and Auerbach's postwar knowledge of the fates of the murdered. Much of the book is Auerbach's memoirs written when she 40, but with additional content from later in her life.

Auerbach was one of three survivors of Emanuel Ringeblum's sixty member secret archives, the Oneg Shabbat. This organization sought to document the experiences of Jews under German occupation and the destruction of Jewish communities. They created reports, gathered signs and posters, correspondence, conducted interviews and preserved the work of writers. While also running a soup kitchen, Auerbach begin to write for Oneg Shabbat and after escaping the ghetto in 1943 under forged papers, served as a courier while also writing her memoirs. After the way she worked in Poland before emigrated to Israel in 1950 where she founded the witness testimony department at Yad Vashem.

Warsaw Testament, released here for the first time in English, compiles Auerbach's firsthand accounts and testimonies that captured the day-to-day life of the Warsaw Ghetto as events were still unfolding. Much of the narrative expands from Auerbach's work in the soup kitchen and efforts to both feed the hungry and prevent or combat disease and illness. Many of the artists and writers detailed came to the soup kitchen seeking food, where Auerbach would aid all she could. A recurrent subject is the visually apparent diminishment of Ghetto residents through starvation

This work highlights the community of the ghetto: artistically, culturally and benevolently. It gives individually stories from the ghetto, emphasizing their humanity, especially their creativity and resilience. Auerbach depicts the works and accomplishments of writers, poets, composers, musicians, teachers and librarians.

Recommended to historians, readers and researchers of Holocaust studies or those seeking stories of humanity and resistance.

A fascinating collection of accounts with a very useful introduction, providing important context for the works.