Between the Swastika and the Bear: A Polish Memoir, 1925-1948

Born in 1925, Andrew Jurkowski enjoyed a peaceful boyhood on his grandfather's farm in western Poland until the Nazi invasion of 1939. For the next six years, he and his family endured the occupation, determined not only to survive, but to fight back with small acts of defiance. Instead of bringing relief, the end of the war brought new danger, as Poland was taken over by Russian-led Communists. Andrew, then a young man of twenty, was sentenced to a labor camp. He was forced to choose between death and a dangerous escape to the west. This is his eyewitness account of his experiences in rural Poland before, during, and after World War II, until his daring escape from a Communist labor camp to the West in 1946. This book will appeal to readers looking for eye-witness accounts of life in rural Poland, civilian life under the Nazis and the early days of Communist Poland, and a refugee's story of his escape and emigration.