In September of 1939, Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, wealthy landowner and professor of art history, watched the Soviet army march into Poland. After joining the resistance, she was arrested, sentenced to death, and held in Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she taught art history to other women who, like her, might be dead in a few days. This brilliantly written memoir records a neglected side of World War II: the mass murder of Poles, the serial horrors inflicted by both Russians and Nazis, and the immense courage of those who resisted.
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