We Must Not Think of Ourselves, Grodstein - B +

       This is fictionalized memoir of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Adam Panow is a 43 year old widower and English teacher who does not even think of himself as Jewish anymore. Nonetheless, when the ghetto is created in November 1940, he finds himself in a small apartment with a dozen other people. He has taken only a few books and his late wife's necklace with him. He is engaged by the Oneg Shabbat project to interview people and create a written record of the horrors they are all going through. He teaches classes and survives because he has a job. He falls in love with, and carries on an affair with a married woman, Sala Wiskoff, whose husband works for the Judenrat. The necklace affords him the chance to escape, and he takes Sala's two sons with him to safety. This is a well done depiction of the hell the Jews were subjected to. It should be noted that many of the documents created by Oneg Shabbat were found after the war and shed light on life in the ghetto.