About the Book:
The Polski Affair is the story of Rosa Feurmann and others who found themselves as “guests” of the Hotel Polski during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. The Hotel mysteriously drew in Jewish survivors who wished to buy their way to freedom. Rosa, a Jewish partisan infiltrates the hotel. She is detected and comes under the personal control of the Hotel’s Nazi Commandant. What she did to survive continues to haunt Rosa’s life. She is called as a witness at the Commandant’s War Crimes Trial in Heidelberg and years later, she attends a reunion of the surviving hotel `guests’. It is only upon her return to Israel that Rosa ultimately reconciles her inner conflicts.
About the Author:
Leon H. Gildin is an award-winning author, producer and retired entertainment attorney. While practicing law in New York for more than 40 years, Mr. Gildin served as general counsel to actors, writers and composers, produced on and off-Broadway, and collaborated with authors and musicians in the development of scripts and musical material for the stage.
He also served as both an attorney and principal in the development of optioning of properties for major motion pictures, having worked with 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and individual producers.
During his years of practice, Mr. Gildin was counsel to various New York community organizations, including the Bronx Overall Economic Development Committee, a branch of the Bronx Borough President’s Office. He also served on a number of boards, including Chairman of the Board of the New Federal Theatre, a minority theater company, and of the Great Neck Symphony Society.
His award-winning production credits include Appear and Show Cause, a story inspired by the desegregation of the U.S. Army at which time Mr. Gildin was serving oversees. Appear and Show Causeopened the season at the Cleveland Playhouse in 1982, and he then co-produced the same off-Broadway, winning the Audelco Award. In addition, he is the executive producer of a number of TV documentaries. This includes The Secret Army, a documentary about the religious conflict in Ireland, purchased by Viacom for international distribution. Also to his credit is Theresienstadt, Gateway to Auschwitz: Recollections from Childhood, which received a Blue Ribbon Award from the American Film and Video Festival.
In 2000, Mr. Gildin authored a non-fiction work entitled “You Can’t Do Business (or Most Anything Else) Without Yiddish,” published in both hard and soft cover by Hippocrene Books, New York. The book discusses the amount of Yiddish spoken in contemporary English by both Jews and non-Jews alike resulting from Eastern European immigration at the start of the 20th Century.
Mr. Gildin is the 2010 International Book Awards winner in the Historical Fiction category for his book, “The Polski Affair,” published by Diamond River Books, Canada. According to Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, the Head of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University, “‘The Polski Affair’ is a gripping tale that illustrates the moral ambiguity of the Holocaust and the struggle of ordinary people to retain their humanity under extraordinary circumstances.”
“The Polski Affair” is scheduled for release in Hebrew translation by a major Israeli publisher in February 2011.
Mr. Gildin is not quite retired, having completed a sequel to “The Polski Affair.” He resides in Paradise Valley, Arizona, with his wife, Gloria.
Okay. Let me take a minute to regroup. *Breathe* Wow. THAT was some GRIPPING reading! Having recently read Thaisa Frank’s Heidegger’s Glasses and getting somewhat confused but still liking it, I wasn’t sure what I would think of this novel, since it centered around much the same time era, with the Jews and Nazis. Leon H. Gildin blew my mind away with this novel. It is emotionally gripping, powerfully captivating and I was shocked at the happenings that took place in this novel.
Leon Gildin did a fantastically phenomenal job at researching this book. Written to be fictitious, this novel of the Holocaust is haunting and felt so real to me. I know it IS a real event in history, but I felt like I was there, in the middle of the ghetto, death camps and among the Jews at Hotel Polski. Again, while written fictitiously, it is based on historical reality and the things the Jews endured in all those places during this horrific ordeal and their hopeful chance of seeking a safe passage to escape out of Poland, makes me shiver with disgust that an event like that, led by the Nazis, ever occurred.
I am truly glad I took the time to review this book. In this small, historically accurate 5 star novel, I became educated a little more on the happening of the Holocaust and the Jews. I literally read this book in ONE day, I became THAT engrossed in the story. This is highly recommended to everyone, but especially those that are interested in this specific era and events in world history. Well done, Leon!
You can purchase your copy here.
*This book was provided for review and giveaway purposes by ON Point Communications*
The Giveaway:
To enter this comment, please tell me what you think of the Holocaust. That’s it. Oh and leave your email address! NO EMAIL=NO VALID ENTRY! I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t have an email address, then please leave another valid way to contact, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, etc. Open to US Residents only. Giveaway will end on December 26th@1159pmEST. Good luck!
