From My War to Your Peace: Love Nonna

Born in Poland in 1939, brown eyed, dark haired and Jewish, Monika was off to a bad start. Her Father was marched off and shot in the first few days of the Nazi invasion. Her Mother, not knowing what had happened to him, took her to Warsaw to try and find him. So began the years of running and hiding. Monika was shuttled between aunties, in Warsaw, in the country, in rat infested basements and for weeks silent under a table with a little doll, two toy armchairs and books she did not know how to read; her Mother had found a room in the apartment of a virulently anti-semitic countess and whilst her Mother could pass for Aryan, Monika could not.Lodged with another auntie she was forced to drink, dance and sing obscene songs for even more drunken farmhands. She never raised her brown eyes. She had learnt fear and obedience.She walked through Warsaw burning and was thrown from the window of a train on the way to a concentration camp.Yet in the end it came to an end and she survived. She came to England and made a stab at childhood. In due course she married, had children and ran an antiquarian bookshop. She survived. Many years later, waiting on the doorstep for her first grandson to be carried into his warm, secure home, she decided to write him a letter. Ravenswood Publishers are proud to present this letter telling her incredible story to her grandson and to the two grandsons who came along later.