The Good Doctor of Warsaw by Elisabeth Gifford

This book is a fictionalised account of the lives of real people during the late 1930's and on through the Nazi occupation of Poland.  As such it evokes the true horror that must have been felt by the people forced in to the Jewish Ghettos throughout Poland but this book mainly deals with Warsaw and Lvov, although the atrocities committed in Lublin are mentioned.

Excellently researched we have a real sense of time and place and almost immediately you begin to realise that Ms Gifford is writing about people who actually existed and went through this terrible time.  So great was my conviction that this was the case that 30-some pages in I skipped to the Afterword to indeed confirm that Sophia and Misha Wasserman were indeed part of this terrible history alongside Doctor Korczak, Stefa and the children they worked so hard to give normal lives to.

I knew a little about the Polish Jewish Ghettos from an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" but I had not realised quite how wholesale the Nazi Party's destruction of Warsaw was.  Not just the Jewish Ghettos were erased but the whole medieval centre of Warsaw, in what was once the Aryan sector as they realised that they were going to be defeated.

It is a poignant tale, made more so by the daily horrors of cold, dirt and only 200 calories a day.  A suppression of daily life that we cannot truely begin to imagine but Ms Gifford works very hard to make us understand.  You can feel the dust billowing off the pages and the despair but also the determination that somehow, someway they will avoid the Aktion and be swept away to Treblinka, that tomorrow will come and it will be better.

Unfortunately, it reads almost like a factual text and I never felt really connected with the characters.  It is, as the subject matter would suggest, grim and unremitting in it's descriptions of battling to survive just one more day.  It is not a book to "enjoy", it is almost a tract to ensure the same things never happen again in the so-called First World and that is a noble pursuit.

Regrettably I cannot give this more than 3 stars.  This is simply because the guilt it makes you feel for having such an easy life compared to these people is immense.  Other books dealing with this particular era have at least some glimmer of hope to give you and leave you with some semblance of hope for humanity.  Despite making it clear that not all perished, the numbers who made it through alive are so miniscule that it chills you.  Although I read a vast number of genres I read to be entertained and for enjoyment.  This is a book that did neither for me.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

**Review originally published January 26th, 2018**