{"id":1530,"date":"2019-05-09T11:04:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T10:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oczamidziecka.al.uw.edu.pl\/?page_id=1530"},"modified":"2023-12-06T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T09:20:07","slug":"mirabelle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oczamidziecka.al.uw.edu.pl\/index.php\/en\/mirabelle\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirabelka [Mirabelle]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Author: Cezary Harasimowicz<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Illustrator: Marta Kurczewska<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Year: 2018<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Publisher: Zielona Sowa<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Place of publication: Warszawa<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Pages: 199<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
ISBN: 9788380737716<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Cover courtesy of the publisher. \u00a9Wydawnictwo Zielona Sowa Sp. z o.o., Warszawa 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Cezary Harasimowicz\u2019s story is the saga of a family of Mirabelle plum trees which have grown in Warsaw\u2019s neighbourhood of Muran\u00f3w since the 1920s. The book depicts many significant events from the history of Warsaw. Muran\u00f3w attracts Warsaw\u2019s inhabitants as a district tied to the Jewish community. Before the war, social and economic life flourished there. However, during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, the area was fenced off and became a ghetto<\/a>. Its Jewish residents only seemingly did not participate in the post-war reconstruction of the district from the ruins; their ghosts kept visiting their former homes, as they do today. The reader learns about the fates of Dorka, Chaim, Mr. Friedman, Noam, Staszek, Dorotka, and subsequent generations of Varsovians, and in the process gains an exhaustive vision of occasionally difficult interpersonal relationships inscribed within an equally difficult history of twentieth-century Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mirabelle<\/i>\u2019s events are set within a very wide time-frame. The young reader can learn about the golden age of Muran\u00f3w and the wealth of its Jewish residents in the 1920s and 1930s, its destruction in World War Two, the Holocaust \u2013 and other historical eras. The description of the post-war period is not limited to the \u201ccharms\u201d of Socialism or the race to rebuild the capital. Instead, it encompasses the student protests and Anti-Semite sentiments of March 1968<\/a> as well as the introduction of martial law in 1981. Moreover, the author refers to stories told by the current residents of Muran\u00f3w that former Jewish inhabitants sometimes \u201ccome back home\u201d. The ghosts of Dorka, Chaim, Rebeka, Joshua and other Jews who used to live in Warsaw make their presence known after the war, keeping watch over the young Maciek-Noam, who was able to survive Shoah thanks to Irena Sendler\u2019s<\/a> help.<\/span><\/p>\n

It could seem that the story of the Mirabelle plum trees ends on the last pages of Harasimowicz\u2019s book. However, in keeping with the atmosphere of his story, life keeps regenerating, and the Mirabelle manages to return to Muran\u00f3w. Although a luxury apartment building stands in its original growing place today, a few hundred meters away another generation of the same tree was planted on Saturday, 22 September 2018. The tree had \u201cemigrated\u201d to Washington, D.C., in the pockets of Dorotka, Maciek-Noam and Wojtu\u015b who had left Warsaw, and its grafts returned to Poland to be planted in Muran\u00f3w again.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bibliography:<\/h6>\n