SINGER, Isaac Bashevis - Shosha, - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

Book and wrapper still good even though it belonged to a library before  - This is a novel by winning author . The original version appeared in 1974 in the under the title Soul Expeditions..   >>>    Shosha is a hauntingly lyrical love story set in Jewish Warsaw on the eve of its annihilation. Aaron Greidinger, an aspiring Yiddish writer and the son of a distinguished Hasidic rabbi, struggles to be true to his art when faced with the chance at riches and a passport to America. But as he and the rest of the Writers' Club wait in horror for Nazi Germany to invade Poland, Aaron rediscovers Shosha, his childhood love-still living on Krochmalna Street, still mysteriously childlike herself-who has been waiting for him all these years.     (Goodreads)    >>>     Singer, writing in 1978, presents many poignant details of Jewish life in Warsaw in 1939, just before Hitler came.   -   There is a pervading sense of the imminent destruction of an entire way of life ... in the Yeshivas they studied the Talmud ... so long as Hitler - his name should be blotted out - did not attack, each day was a gift from God ... No one knows what God wants if God wanted the Jews to live he wouldn't have created Hitler ... The bitter truth is that many Jews don't want to be Jews anymore But it's too late for total assimilation Judging by the way Hitler occupied one territory after another and the Allies sat back and did nothing there was no hope for the Jews of Poland ... At the Radzymin and Novominsk prayer houses, afternoon services were already in progress   -   Polish antisemitism is starkly presented ... The Jews have taken over Poland the cities are lousy with them once they only stank up the Nalewki, Grzybowska and Krochmaln streets, but lately they swarm like vermin everywhere there is one consolation - Hitler will smoke them out like bedbugs ... It's too bad that Hitler will attack our country but since we haven't had the guts to sweep away this Jewish filth ourselves we have to let the enemy do it for us ... Hitler is on his way but a large part of the Polish press keeps attacking the Jewish minority as if it were the nation's greatest danger.  (Lewis Weinstein on Goodreads)