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Swimming under water

by Halina Zylberman

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1928 in Kraków, the only child of an assimilated family. In 1941 the family took on non-Jewish identities and went into hiding, aided by Polish friends.

Accession 9781876733148 ISBN 9781876733148 Publisher Makor Jewish Community Library

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position_updated_at: 2026-05-05 17:12
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binding_type: Hard Back
dimensions: none captured
spine_text: SWIMMING UNDER WATER HALINA ZYLBERMAN

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Topics and Themes

1. **Holocaust Survival & Jewish Persecution in Poland**
The book centres on a Jewish family's five-year struggle for survival during the Nazi occupation of Poland, spanning Krakow and Warsaw. It documents the persecution of Jews under German rule and the extreme measures one family took to stay alive.

Connect to books about: Holocaust history, Jewish life in Nazi-occupied Europe, genocide studies, WWII atrocities.

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2. **False Identity & Passing as Non-Jewish**
Halina and her family obtained forged papers identifying them as Christians, learned Catholic prayers and rituals, and relocated to Warsaw where they were unknown — all to avoid detection. Her father even underwent a painful operation to conceal his Jewish identity.

Connect to books about: hidden identities, passing, wartime deception, the psychology of disguise.

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3. **Child & Adolescent Experience of War**
Halina was just ten years old when the war began, making this a coming-of-age account embedded within extreme trauma. Her experience of war is filtered through the eyes of a child growing into adolescence under constant danger.

Connect to books about: children in wartime, adolescent trauma, loss of innocence, war and youth.

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4. **Family Separation & Fragmentation**
The family was forced to split apart for safety — her sister Stasia separated due to her appearance, her father lived apart due to his circumcision, and the family spent years moving between strangers' homes. The book traces how war dismantles and tests family bonds.

Connect to books about: family displacement, refugee experiences, wartime separation, kinship under crisis.

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5. **Rescue, Righteous Gentiles & Human Solidarity**
Central to the memoir is the role of non-Jewish friends, a priest, and others who risked their lives to help the family — teaching them Catholic rituals, hiding them, and intervening at critical moments. The book is, in part, a tribute to these rescuers.

Connect to books about: the Righteous Among the Nations, moral courage, rescue narratives, interfaith solidarity.

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6. **Memory, Trauma & the Limits of Testimony**
Halina chose not to write about a two-and-a-half-year period she found too traumatic to revisit, and the book is structured around vivid, episodic memories rather than strict chronology. This makes it as much a meditation on what memory can and cannot hold as it is a factual account.

Connect to books about: trauma and memory, survivor testimony, the ethics of witnessing, Holocaust literature.

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7. **Forced Labour & Living Among the Enemy**
In one of the book's most striking threads, Halina and her mother are captured and compelled to work as cooks in a German army camp — living hidden in plain sight among the very forces persecuting them, before eventually being released through a priest's intervention.

Connect to books about: forced labour, occupation, resistance and collaboration, moral ambiguity in wartime.

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8. **Immigration, Diaspora & Jewish Identity After the War**
After liberation, the family returned to Krakow, but quickly recognised there was no future for Jews in postwar Poland and emigrated to Australia in 1948. This arc from survivor to immigrant shapes the book's broader question of where home and belonging lie after catastrophe.

Connect to books about: Jewish diaspora, postwar displacement, immigration and resettlement, identity in exile.

Swimming under water

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