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From Publishers Weekly:
This amazing and moving study sheds new light on details of the Holocaust that have up until now not been examined. Under the German occupation, "ninety-eight percent of the Jewish population of Warsaw"-480,000 Jews-perished in WWII. But while the conditions of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto and its insurrection have been detailed numerous times, this study focuses on a new area of scholarship: Jews who evaded detection or fled the ghetto. Using diaries, witness testimony, and quantitative analysis (in which he tries to ascertain the precise numbers of people in the various groups he is writing about) Paulson draws a vibrant portrait of the complexity of Warsaw life, and especially of what he calls the "secret city," a collection of 28,000 Jews not confined to the ghetto, "together with the many non-Jews who helped hide them, and the criminal element that ceaselessly hunted them." Detailing a wealth of incident-from Jews involved in complex networks of survival to those who passed for non-Jewish but were sent to work camps for being Polish-the author argues that both Jewish and non-Jewish life in Warsaw was far more complicated than has been thought. Paulson, a fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, explains that this material was not examined earlier because of a "stigma attached to flight" and a valorization of resistance, such as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. While this is more a scholarly than popular account, it is an important and fascinating analysis that calls for serious thought and reevaluation of Holocaust studies. 16 illus.

Book Description: Though the Nazis forced most of Warsaw's Jews into the city's infamous ghetto during World War II, some 28,000 Jews either hid and never entered the Warsaw Ghetto or escaped from it. This book-the first detailed treatment of Jewish escape and hiding during the Holocaust-tells the dramatic story of the hidden Jews of Warsaw.

Gunnar S. Paulsson shows that after the 1942 deportations nearly a quarter of the ghetto's remaining Jews managed to escape. Once in hiding, connected by elaborate networks of which Poles, Germans, and the Jews themselves were largely unaware, they formed what can aptly be called a secret city. Paulsson challenges many established assumptions. He shows that despite appalling difficulties and dangers, many of these Jews survived; that the much-reviled German, Polish, and Jewish policemen, as well as Jewish converts and their families, were key in helping Jews escape; that though many more Poles helped than harmed the Jews, most stayed neutral; and that escape and hiding happened spontaneously, without much help from either the Polish or the Jewish underground. He suggests that the Jewish leadership was wrong to dismiss the possibility of escape, staking everything on a hopeless uprising. Paulsson's engrossing book offers a new perspective on Jewish honor and Holocaust history.

From the Back Cover: "For many of us in this field it is always hard to imagine something new. Paulsson manages to break new ground, however, and offers an intelligent, fresh analysis." -Michael Marrus

About the Author: Gunnar S. Paulsson is the Pearl Resnick Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, has taught at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and was Senior Historian of the Holocaust project at the Imperial War Museum, London.