Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939-1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1982. Pp. 487.
This chapter reviews Yisrael Gutman's The Jews of Warsaw 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (1982). Yisrael Gutman, Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of the Yad Vashem Research Center, has undertaken the challenging task of describing the major trends and developments that occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto during its unhappy existence. Himself a former resident of the Ghetto and participant in the Uprising, the author sets three major objectives for his work. The first objective is to consider the ‘character and conduct’ of the Warsaw Jews under increasingly stressful conditions. The second is to discuss the intellectual and psychological methods used to deal with the many pressures of daily living. The third objective is to analyse the evolution of the militant Jewish resistance movement that culminated in the Uprising. In pursuing his goals, Gutman focuses on the three main collective actors in this complex story: the Germans and their collaborators, their Jewish victims, and the Poles, both those in Warsaw and in the London-based exile government.