Black Swastika, Red Swastika

About the Book

This is a historical novel, a fi ctional story based on historical facts.



The book begins in the summer of 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto at the start of the great “Aktion” of deporting the Warsaw Jews to the death camp Treblinka.

A pair of young doctors, Leo and Rachel, with a 4 year old son Adam, tries desperately to escape the deportation and death. They are initially successful but eventually they are caught by the death machine and taken to the Umschlagplatz for the trip to Treblinka. They escape from the Umschlagplatz, and later from the ghetto , just before the ghetto uprising, to hide on the “Aryan” side .Adam is sent to a catholic family and Leo organizes the hospital at the edge of a huge forest near Warsaw, mostly for the partisans fi ghting against the Nazis. They all survive the WWII but Rachel succumbs later to the ovarian cancer .

The second part of the book starts at the end of 1952, under a communist regime, when Leo is already a Professor of Cardiology and treats prominent Polish politicians. At that time in the Soviet Union 14 members of The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were executed and many prominent Jewish Doctors were arrested in the trumped up case of “The Murderers in the White Coats”, accused of trying to kill Soviet politicians, including Joseph Stalin.

Leo is called to Moscow to treat visiting Polish Prime Minister, because all Russian doctors, terrifi ed by the arrest of their colleagues, are afraid to treat him. When in Moscow Leo is entrusted with the secret mission to notify the West that Stalin and the KGB are planning to deport all the Jews to Beribidzhan in the Eastern Siberia.

He meets Tanya a young doctor, a daughter of the most prominent Russian lady scientist, who is now exiled to Kazakhstan for her membership in The Jewish Anti- Fascist Committee. Tanya looks like the younger sister of his late wife, Rachel and Leo and Tanya fall in love almost immediately.

Leo is interrogated brutally in Moscow by the KGB but is released with the help of Polish Prime Minister. He returns to Warsaw and shortly later attends a Cardiology conference in Switzerland. There he is run over by a truck driven by the KGB agent but escapes with only broken arm. Afterwards he drives to Paris where he goes to the US Embassy to report the KGB plans.

The Embassy offi cials don’t believe fully his story but when the papers report the beginning of the court proceedings against the “Jewish Doctors”, his story fi nds a little more understanding.

He is received with more appreciation in the Israeli Embassy and is fl own to Tel- Aviv to report to the Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the plight of the Russian Jews.

As a result of his mission major US and Israeli newspapers report on the Stalin’s and the KGB’s plans to deport Russian Jews.

Later Leo goes to Moscow, together with his son Adam, to rescue Tanya from the serious threat of arrest and the deportation. They get married and using false papers and big bribes they manage to return to Poland in a nail biting escape.

Stalin is seriously ill but he jailed his personal physician. He becomes more paranoid and threatening to one of his closest “hangman”, who decides to eliminate this danger. Stalin’s death ends all plans of Jewish deportation to Siberia.

About the Author

The author is a practicing Manhattan Cardiologist. This is his second novel of historical fiction. It deals with two uprising in WWII Warsaw, one Jewish and the other Polish. Author's early childhood was spent in the Warsaw Ghetto and the memory of these times inspired his first novel: "Black Swastika, Red Swastika", published by X1ibris in 2009.