Against a despairing, awful backcloth of ghetto inhumanity here hangs also a tapestry woven of love, compassion and hope.
In the pages of The Good Doctor Is a true but harrowing account of the barbarous subjugation of the Jews inside the walled off Warsaw compound in wartime Poland -
This was the construct of Nazi atrocity - a ghetto of once proud people reduced to rags and bones, bereft of the most basic of comforts and bodily needs.
Amongst this detritus of the human spirit lingered the conscience and all encompassing humanity of The Pan Doctor
This saviour of war-striven Warsaw in Hitler's ghastly apocalypse has been central to many great works of fiction and fact.
As an author, humanitarian, paediatrician, pedagogue and defender of children's rights Janusz Korczak has been the inspiration in theater, opera, TV, and film.
British author Elizabeth Gifford is the latest to delve into the tragic poignancy of his humanistic commitment and courage that ended in the grimness of Treblinka.
But in her well-crafted writing style,that combines nuance and neat thought and storytelling, she brings together the truth of two dedicated and loving souls from the Warsaw ghetto Misha and Sophia who are greatly influenced by the "Pan Doctor" and whose accounts of his work and struggles -and of their own -- in such unthinkable circumstances form the basis of a riveting work of
fictionalised fact.
These are the sort of books that need to be written and to be read - and it in Ms Gifford's gift that we find and can appreciate the almost unimaginable
From off her pallet of soft sepia colours she paints a haunting vista of beleaguered people both in body and soul.
In the end a holocaust of love , a sacrifice of devotion
In the pages of The Good Doctor Is a true but harrowing account of the barbarous subjugation of the Jews inside the walled off Warsaw compound in wartime Poland -
This was the construct of Nazi atrocity - a ghetto of once proud people reduced to rags and bones, bereft of the most basic of comforts and bodily needs.
Amongst this detritus of the human spirit lingered the conscience and all encompassing humanity of The Pan Doctor
This saviour of war-striven Warsaw in Hitler's ghastly apocalypse has been central to many great works of fiction and fact.
As an author, humanitarian, paediatrician, pedagogue and defender of children's rights Janusz Korczak has been the inspiration in theater, opera, TV, and film.
British author Elizabeth Gifford is the latest to delve into the tragic poignancy of his humanistic commitment and courage that ended in the grimness of Treblinka.
But in her well-crafted writing style,that combines nuance and neat thought and storytelling, she brings together the truth of two dedicated and loving souls from the Warsaw ghetto Misha and Sophia who are greatly influenced by the "Pan Doctor" and whose accounts of his work and struggles -and of their own -- in such unthinkable circumstances form the basis of a riveting work of
fictionalised fact.
These are the sort of books that need to be written and to be read - and it in Ms Gifford's gift that we find and can appreciate the almost unimaginable
From off her pallet of soft sepia colours she paints a haunting vista of beleaguered people both in body and soul.
In the end a holocaust of love , a sacrifice of devotion