Author: Krystyna Siesicka
Year: 2000
Publisher: Akapit Pres
Place of publication: Łódź
Pages: 188
ISBN: 8387463787
Notes: Second edition in 2009 (K. Siesicka, …nie ma z kim tańczyć…, Łódź: Akapit Press, 2009, pp. 187, ISBN: 9788360773871).
Cover with reproduction of “Jeanne Samary in a Low Necked Dress” by Auguste Renoir courtesy of the publisher. ©Krystyna Siesicka 
Cover with reproduction of “Narodziny życia” by Jacek Yerka courtesy of the publisher. ©Krystyna Siesicka
The contemporary plot focuses around three women who represent three generations: Zosia, her mother Weronika, and Aunt Irena. Although each character lives in her own world, they connect through their family’s history and the history of Polish Jews. Having found a long-lost diary, Irena – who lived through the interwar period and the Second World War – reminisces about the dramatic event of the German occupation as well as the forced migration of Jewish Poles as part of the Communist government’s anti-Semitic campaign of 1968.
The contemporary plot is intertwined with fragments of the fictional diary. These passages contain images of the German occupation of Warsaw, including the Jewish residents’ struggle for survival. Irena remembers her friend Kuba Fiszbaum, whom she had a crush on as a teenager. She made a successful attempt to help him escape from the ghetto and hid him on the so-called “Aryan” side of the wall. The book depicts other acts of persecution against Jews (such as closing their businesses or the order to wear armbands with the Star of David), the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Uprising of 1943 and its suppression, which ended in the destruction of a synagogue in Tłomackie Street. It also shows Polish people providing help to the Jews. Depictions of modern anti-Semitism are present as well (such as writing on a wall which says “Jews to gas chambers” [81]).
Bibliography:
- Tylicka, B., Rozmowy pokoleniowe, „Nowe Książki”, no. 1, 2001, p. 41;
- Tyszka, A., Puste strony, „Guliwer”, no. 4, 2001, pp. 38–39.