The Crooked Mirror

A lyrical literary memoir that explores the exhilarating discomforting and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation taking place in Poland today   Although an estimated 80 percent of American Jews are of Polish descent many in the postwar generation and those born later know little about their families’ connection to their ancestral home. In fact many Jews continue to think of Poland as a bastion of anti-Semitism since nearly the entire population of Polish Jewry was killed in the Holocaust. The reality is more complex: although German-occupied Poland was the site of great persecution towards Jews it was also the epicenter of European Jewish life for centuries. Louise Steinman sets out to examine the burgeoning Polish-Jewish reconciliation movement through the lens of her own family's history joining the ranks of Jews of Polish descent who are confronting both Poland’s heroism and occupation-afflicted atrocities and who are seeking to reconnect with their families’ Polish roots