By
– November 1, 2011
Glenwick’s memoir focuses on his experiences as a physician in Russian-occupied Ukraine after the outbreak of World War II until the Germans took over. With help, he then smuggled himself back to Warsaw to be with his family in the ghetto, became registered to practice medicine and worked in the hospital, amid all the surrounding horror and confusion of the ghetto, until he too was marched to the camp where selection was taking place. Luckily he was sent to Budzyn, a labor camp where he met five other physicians from Warsaw and two German Jewish physicians. The German officers employed them all in a clinic with decent living accommodations. From there, he was transferred to a series of other camps until liberation, a DP camp, and eventual immigration to the United States. The book would have benefited from stories about how the doctors helped some of the prisoners survive.
Marcia W. Posner, Ph.D., of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, is the library and program director. An author and playwright herself, she loves reviewing for JBW and reading all the other reviews and articles in this marvelous periodical.