Join us on Tuesday, July 11th at 6:00 p.m. for a reading and discussion with Judy Rakowsky, author of Jews in the Garden.
Jews in the Garden: A Holocaust Survivor, the Fate of His Family, and the Secret History of Poland in WWII by Judy Rakowsky
"Riveting. A powerful, inspiring book which takes us to the heart of darkness in search of fates of Jews who tried to survive in hiding, in Poland, during the Holocaust. Jews in the Garden uncovers the long-forgotten, horrible, deaths at the hands of neighbors, and records the painstaking, decades-long effort to restore and to preserve the memory of the past. Judy Rakowsky’s book is a must read for all of us who care about the history of the Holocaust and about the preservation of memory of the Jewish catastrophe." — Jan Grabowski, PhD, author of the prize-winning Hunt for Jews and Night Without End
Two cousins uncover details of Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust and their fight to finally bring those horrific truths to light.
Investigative journalist Judy Rakowsky and her elderly cousin Sam, a Holocaust survivor, never knew what happened to their family during the Holocaust. All they knew was that their relatives were hidden away from the Nazis by neighbors, and then they were never heard from again. Over the course of two decades, the two traveled back to Sam’s hometown in Poland in search of clues to what became of their lost family—but when they asked questions, doors were shut in their faces. As they soon learned, Poland has done all it can to obscure its involvement with the Nazi party…
A globe-trotting detective story, Jews in the Garden turns investigative eyes and ears towards the horrific actions taken by regular citizens during the Holocaust. This unlikely sleuthing pair knocks on doors, petitions court documents, gets run off properties, seeks clandestine meetings, and ultimately discovers what really happened to the “Jews in the garden next door.”
Judy Rakowsky is an award-winning journalist whose career of enterprise reporting for the Boston Globe, the Providence Journal and People Magazine often led coverage on the major stories of the times from organized crime, priest sex abuse, and bank fraud to security issues after 9/11 to online bullying of teens in the 2000s. She has garnered awards for feature writing, sensitivity to crime victims, enterprise reporting, domestic violence, and online bullying. She lives in Boston, MA.
