Between the Swastika and the Bear: A Polish Memoir: 1925-1948

By Andrew Jurkowski

THIS IS THE SECOND EDITION, REVISED IN 2023. This book will appeal to readers looking for eye-witness accounts of life in rural Poland, civilian life under the Nazis and the early days of Communist Poland, and a refugee's story of his escape and emigration. Born in 1925, Andrew Jurkowski enjoyed a peaceful boyhood on his grandfather's farm in western Poland until the Nazi invasion of 1939. For the next six years, he and his family endured the occupation, determined not only to survive, but to fight back with small acts of defiance. Instead of relief, the end of the war brought new danger, as Poland fell under the control of Russian-led Communists. Andrew, then a young man of twenty, was sentenced to a labor camp. This is his eyewitness account of his experiences in rural Poland before, during, and after World War II, until his daring escape from a Communist labor camp to the West in 1946.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BXN21T3F
• ISBN13: 9798362645847
• Release Date: December 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 221 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"