Ein Roman uber das Warschauer Ghetto, der einzigartig dasteht in der europaischen Literatur. Ein Buch, das das Grauen zum Sprechen bringt. Wie erinnert man an eine Welt, die nicht mehr ist? Wenn die Ermordeten keine Graber haben, wenn Wohnungen, Hauser, Straßen spurlos verschwunden sind? Wenn alles, was einmal Leben war, der Vernichtung anheimgefallen ist? Bogdan Wojdowskis Roman »Brot fur die Toten« rekonstruiert die Holle des Warschauer Ghettos: bis zu 500.000 Menschen, eingesperrt auf einem drei Quadratkilometer großen Areal. Als praziser Chronist schildert Wojdowski das Leiden unter der deutschen Barbarei, vor allem aber gibt er den Opfern ihre Wurde zuruck. Protagonist des Romans ist der Junge David. In seinen Augen, seinem Bewusstsein spiegelt sich »der Alb, den man Leben nennt«. Davids Familie, die Menschen auf den Straßen - im verzweifelten Versuch, von Tag zu Tag zu uberleben -, sie alle erhalten ihre Stimmen, ihre Gesichter, ihre Namen zuruck. Nur wenige Werke der Holocaustliteratur vermogen, was Wojdowski mit diesem verdichteten, polyphonen Roman gelungen ist: nicht allein die Vernichtung zu dokumentieren, sondern die vernichtete judische Welt in ihrer Vielfalt wieder ins Leben zu rufen. 1971 erschien der Roman in Polen, 1974 publizierte der Verlag Volk und Welt Henryk Bereskas exzellente Ubersetzung ins Deutsche. Die Neuauflage dieses bedeutenden Werks erscheint als erster Band der auf zehn Bande angelegten »Bibliothek der polnischen Holocaustliteratur«. "When does a man cease to be a man?" asks Dr. Obuchowski, the ghetto physician. "Old Baum babbles something about freedom and other twaddle, and I can't understand a thing. The belly rules the world of the hungry. 'Eat, eat!' That's the cry of the last living cell and there are none that are deaf to that cry." That cry echoes throughout the pages of Bread for the Departed, Bogdan Wojdowski's almost unbearably harrowing novel about the Warsaw ghetto from 1940 to 1942. Told in a chaotic swirl of Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German, Wojdowski's crowning achievement loses very little in this masterful translation by Madeline G. Levine. Episodic, almost without plot, his narrative accumulates weight not through symbol but through sheer detail, amassed and related with horrific detachment. As sketched by Wojdowski, the ghetto is a Boschian nightmare, its corpses turning blue and swollen in the streets, its living skeletons tormented by cold, hunger, typhus, cockroaches, and lice. Its principal character, young David, does whatever is necessary to obtain precious bread, including risking being shot while crossing to the Aryan side of the wall to beg or barter for food. In a world where "food was dearer and more worth saving than life," an emaciated woman named Malka wanders the streets pulling up her skirts for the promise of bread, while David and his gang of starving friends pull the gold teeth from corpses in search of something to sell. When the Germans begin to round up the Jews for deportation, David and his family must choose whether to hide, fight, or join the transports. In any case, they realize, the same fate awaits. "Why am I still alive?" asks David's father after watching his wife herded into a truck. "In order to endure. There's no alternative," his brother Yehuda gently replies. It is impossible to read these words and not think of Wojdowski, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto who took his own life in 1994. For him, perhaps, this crude will to endure was the cruelest Holocaust legacy of all. --Mary Park