Now Available: The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler

Tue Feb 23 22:51:08 UTC 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Academic Studies Press is pleased to announce that the first book in our Jews in Poland Series is now available. We look forward to hearing your comments. Please keep in mind that we offer a special discount to SEELANGs members. 

The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler
By Edmund Kessler
Introduction by Antony Polonsky
Edited by Renata Kessler

ISBN 978-1-934843-98-7 (cloth) $30.00 / £25.00
ISBN 978-1-934843-99-4 (paper) $19.00 / £15.99
250 pp., 15 ills., February 2010

Series: The Jews of Poland

Topic Areas: Autobiography / Memoir, Holocaust, Polish Studies and History

Level: General Reader / Academic 

Summary: In The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler, Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years, 1942-1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who, as a teenager, was a care-taker for the hidden Jews on his family’s farm. Edmund’s daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written the epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. A tremendous resource for historians, scholars, and all serious
 students of the Holocaust. 

Author: Edmund Kessler attended the Jan Kazimierz School of Law in Lwow, Poland. He graduated with an Advanced Degree in law in 1931. He was registered with the Bar Association in Krakow and Lwow, Poland. After immigrating to America, he completed a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from New York University in 1958. He worked as an accountant for the New York City Rent and Rehabilitation Commission until his retirement. Mr. Kessler began translating the diary himself shortly before his death. However, he was not able to finish the task that became his daughter’s legacy.

Reviews:
“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is a slim volume with considerable power. In prose and poetry, Kessler describes the conditions of Jewish life in the large but understudied ghetto of Lwow, Poland. His observations are keen, precise, his tone reserved and understated. He writes simply: “needless to say, conditions were difficult.” Elsewhere he says: “I owe my survival to the fact that admirable people still in the world.” 
-- Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University (Los Angeles) 

“The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler is not only a gripping account of the fate of Lwow Jewry during the war but also a unique mirror of the parallel perspectives of the rescued and their rescuers. This rich collection includes Kessler's wartime diary, his wartime poetry, and a 1998 memoir by Kazimierz Kalwinski, the son of the Polish couple who hid Kessler, his wife and 22 other Jews on their farm. Kessler was not what many regard as "a typical Polish Jew."  He was an accomplished attorney, highly educated and spoke Polish as his first language. But in a way, Kessler was representative of a now destroyed subculture, the rich world of pre-war acculturated middle class Galician Jewry, a world which combined a deep love of Polish culture with a strong devotion to Jewish identity. Kessler was both an attorney and a poet, a shrewd observer for whom the horrors that he was experiencing only encouraged him to reaffirm his humanity through poetry of witness.
 It is especially important that this collection includes Kalwinski's memoirs. To hide Jews in German occupied Poland was to expose oneself and one's family to the risk of execution. It was not so easy to procure food and to secure a hiding place from the scrutiny of prying eyes at a time when Germans were conducting constant searches for food and for hidden arms. How does one do this for 24 people? This book is indeed an important addition to our knowledge of the Holocaust.”
-- Samuel Kassow, Charles H Northam professor of history, Trinity College (Hartford, CT), author of Who Will Write Our History?

For more information or to order using your SEELANGs discount, please visit our website: www.academicstudiespress.com or contact us at sales at academicstudiespress.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

All the best,

Christa Kling
Sales and Marketing
Academic Studies Press
christa.kling at academicstudiespress.com

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