Within These Walls of Sorrow is about the Apteka Pod Orlem – a pharmacy operated by Poles who wouldn’t abandon their premises in the heart of the Krakow ghetto in WWII, choosing instead to risk their lives to serve those within the ghetto walls. Based on a true story, the characters are fictional amalgamations of real people. We see the world through the eyes of pharmacist, Zosia Lewendowska, and her young Jewish neighbour, who grows into a young woman during the story. We meet the characters in 1938 and stay with them for the next seven years. Seven brutal years.
Like in her book The White Rose Resists, Amanda puts you in the shoes of a witness to history. Readers experience the same shock, disbelief and anger as Zosia, as she witnesses these events and makes heart-rending decisions about how she can best help in the face of the countless atrocities she sees. We experience the hopelessness of Jewish girl Hania Silberman, who’s youth is disrupted by the Nazi occupation and gradually disintegrates as she experiences the organised, yet still somehow arbitrary, cruelty and violence of Nazi hatred for her people.
The subject matter is sometimes difficult to get through, as it should be. These times are hard to write about. However, Amanda laces courage, resistance, resilience and redemption throughout the book, proving herself a master. Her research is thorough and meticulous, so as a reader I trust her to honour the Jewish experience while telling a little-known story of Polish resistance.
The story asks tough questions. Primarily, as a person of faith, Jewish or Christian, how do you understand the world when the Creator God appears to have looked away from it? How should you respond when brutality and evil infects the whole of your society? Ultimately Zosia’s motif, a saying of her dead husband murdered by the Nazis at the beginning of the occupation, answers:
“There is evil and there is good and there is a space between. We are given free will to choose where we stand. Evil thrives when good men choose the space between.”
This unflinching book will linger with you for days afterwards. You can read an excerpt at Amanda’s website.
Hi Jen, Thanks for sharing your insightful review. Amanda’s book sounds like a brilliant and challenging read that will require emotional energy to process the story. It’s on my wish list. 😊
The book sounds like it would be a good movie. Sometimes if a movie follows the book closely it can be easier to watch if that makes sense than reading at times. I remember watching a movie based on a true story last year. I forget the ladies name but they were in Poland I think and were rescuing jews from the gheto. Eventually she was caught beaten but thanks to a miracle was saved at the end. I would have struggled to read the story but found the movie heartbreaking but also educational.
These stories need to still be shared. While they are hard to read/watch there is so much hope as well. I think of the current war while I want it ended now I remember WW2 it took a few years but in the end Good did win. Also with other wars they don’t always end quickly but in the end often the dictator or movement is crushed.