Heartbreak and hope entwined together. Powerful, compelling and, at times, difficult to read about the suffering...

The subject matter is very far from delightful but the author delivers a powerful, compelling account of the fate of those who struggled for survival in the Warsaw ghetto. Sadly, most of them failed in that struggle; Of the half a million people who lived in the Warsaw ghetto, less than one percent survived to tell their story.

This book had me in tears; a beautiful love story in tragic circumstances, all the more emotional for being based on real people and real events. Elisabeth Gifford has done thorough research into the story of a Polish doctor who transformed ideas about child care.

The novel is based on the true story of Dr Janusz Korcsak, a Polish Jew and the founder of a large orphanage in Warsaw. The doctor runs orphanages in which his ground-breaking ideas are applied and he attracts workers and students. Misha and Sophia are two students in love and about to marry at the start of WW2 and they try to flee the Warsaw ghetto to spend their life together. The novel tells their amazing story as well as Korcsak.They are forced back however and Misha is working for the amazing Dr Korczak trying to save the orphan children from Nazi's. The young love between the two of these develops into a strong relationship which provides them some hope.

There are many other close relationships between characters we grow to love, many of them the children in an orphanage within the Warsaw ghetto.

The Good Doctor of Warsaw is such a book. Heartbreak and hope entwined together. Powerful, compelling and, at times, difficult to read about the suffering...