''Michelangelo in Ravensbrück: One Woman's War against the Nazis'' is a

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

Karolina Lanckorońska Countess Karolina Maria Adelajda Franciszka Ksawera Małgorzata Edina Lanckorońska (Polish pronunciation: a.rɔˈlʲi.na lant͡skɔˈrɔɲska11 August 1898 — 25 August 2002) was a Polish noble, World War II resistance fighter, philanthropist ...

, a World War II resistance fighter and postwar historian who survived the

Ravensbrück concentration camp Ravensbrück () was a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure of 1 ...

for women and after liberation went on to record the history of this lesser known side of

the Holocaust in occupied Poland The Holocaust saw the ghettoization, robbery, deportation and mass murder of Jews, alongside other groups under similar racial pretexts in occupied Poland by the Nazi Germany. Over three million Polish Jews were murdered, primarily at the ...

. Initially, Lanckorońska did not want her war memoir published in her lifetime. However, after much persuasion she consented to publication in Poland, by ZNAK Publishing of

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

in 2001, a year before her death. The book, whose British version is titled ''Those Who Trespass against Us: One Woman's War against the Nazis'', sold over 50,000 copies in the Polish original and is now selling well in English. The U.S. edition was published in hardback in Spring 2007 by

Da Capo Press Da Capo Press is an American publishing company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. It is now an imprint of Hachette Books. History Founded in 1964 as a publisher of music books, as a division of Plenum Publishers, it had additional offi ...

(Perseus Publishing Group) under the new title, ''Michelangelo in Ravensbrück''.

Narrative

Despite the implications of the book title, the actual narrative is in most part devoted to activities which preceded the author's imprisonment at the camp. Lanckorońska describes the

German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

and the events surrounding the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

witnessed and experienced first hand while in her home city of

Lwów Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

.Goodreads (2015)
Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War Against the Nazis
by Karolina Lanckoronska, translated by Noel Clark, with Preface by Eva Hoffman. Goodreads Book Reviews.

References

Polish non-fiction books World War II memoirs Personal accounts of the Holocaust {{Holocaust-memoir-stub