Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Teacher of Warsaw

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Mario Escobar

NOTE – I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Muse for the eARC. 

It’s hard to know where to start with this review without having fully digested the ending. This story is warm and cold, hard and soft, anger-inducing and tear-extracting. It had all the feels and in all the right moments. 

Janusz Korczak is a sixty year old teacher living in Warsaw in 1939 when Nazis invade and his world collapses around him and the Jewish orphans who live at his school. The story progresses as one would think; the Nazis invade and little by little, freedoms are taken away until they are all rounded up and impounded in the Warsaw ghetto. Once there, their lives take a turn for the worse until the painful end. 

Here’s what worked well for me – 

  1. This book felt written very much off the heart of the sleeve of someone who desperately wanted to convey this story. 
  2. The idea of this hero in the autumn of his life yet still so strong, so fierce, so gentle and so kind fighting for children when he was given every opportunity to escape is awe inspiring, to say the least. 
  3. The relationships Janusz had with those around him, from the children to adult, who gave their all and more at a time when tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed played out well in this story. 

Given this book was based on a real-life hero, it would be remiss of me to add anything negative to this. This story was simply beautiful and so very tragic. It stays with you long past the last page. Read it with a box of kleenex. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: 

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Author:

By day, I work a fulltime job in corporate America. By night, I'm a fulltime couch potato. I love to read, write, embroider, crochet and watch British mysteries. When I do leave the house, it's to either go to church or to buy yarn and books. I'm a firm believer that buying books and buying yarn are hobbies on their own. I'm also the single mom (happily divorced for more than 15 glorious years) of two fabulous young women, rescue mom of one dog and rescue grandma to one black cat. My older daughter, Shelby is high-functioning autistic and an avid gamer. My younger daughter, Emilie, is married and lives with her husband about three hours away from me and is an avid baker. Both love Jesus fiercely and in their own way.

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