Who Are You, Mr. Grymek? (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies)

by Natan Gross

"Who Are You, Mr. Grymek? describes the dramatic struggle of a Jewish family for survival. It is divided into two parts. The first, 'Such a Home it Was', depicts the life of the author's affluent family in Cracow, where before the war 60,000 Jewish citizens lived. Natan Gross's parents were proprietors of the widely known chinaware, crystal and ceramics firm, Jacob Gross. He and his brothers and sister attended the Hebrew school and throughout this section the author's love for his beautiful home town shines through." "Part Two, 'On the Narrow Footbridge', shows how this pleasant existence was shattered by the Nazis' invasion of Poland. Natan's father escaped with one of his sons to Lwow, but his longed-for wish to rejoin his family was never fulfilled. His courageous wife managed to escape with her children to Warsaw, where they lived on borrowed identities as Christian Poles." "Experiencing, on the one hand, immense adversities, denunciations and arrests, and, on the other, miraculou