Charleston County Public Library

Vera Gran, the accused, Agata Tuszyńska ; translated by Charles Ruas from the French of Isabelle Jannès-Kalinowski

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Vera Gran

795175228

Agata Tuszyńska ; translated by Charles Ruas from the French of Isabelle Jannès-Kalinowski

the accused

The extraordinary, controversial story of Vera Gran, and her piano accompanist, Władysław Szpilman. Gran was a beautiful, exotic prewar Polish singing star: sensual contralto, favorite of the 1930s Warsaw nightclubs, celebrated before, and during, her year in the Warsaw Ghetto, but afterwards accused of collaborating with the Nazis. An explosive, resonant portrait of lives lived inside a nightmare time, exploring the larger, more profound question of the nature of collaboration, of the price of survival, and of the long, treacherous shadow cast in its aftermath

She picked up the receiver but didn't speak -- She had promised me her dress -- It was a massive building -- What is the taste of hunger? -- She left the Jewish quarter on August 2, 1942 -- You were working with the Gestapo -- I can tell you a few things -- Codes of survival inside the ghetto and on the outside -- In the above deposition, I have told only the truth -- She never called him "my pianist" -- "The Jews dreamed of having their own Mata Hari" -- To the Ministry of Public Security -- The train from Marseille pulled into the Gare de Lyon -- They threatened to attend the performance wearing the striped pajamas of the camps -- It's the last letter -- She's happy when I bring records of her singing -- It was to Lailly-en-Val, in the vicinity of Orléans -- December 12, 2007: the burial place