A Stairwell in Lodz

About the Book

A Stairwell in Lodz is the complex and moving story of three women set in 1994 in the transitional period of Polish history, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although they live in separate apartments off of a common stairwell in a Soviet-style bloc building, they know little of each other´s secrets. They pass each other daily, yet misjudge and apply stereotypes to each of their lives, their past, and their true selves. Set in the former ghetto of Lodz,the large industrial city in central Poland, the main characters live in the shadow of the history of Lodz, and more specifically the horrors of the Lodz Ghetto. Few people in Lodz wish to talk or remember what happened in the Lodz Ghetto, unlike the Warsaw Uprising. In A Stairwell in Lodz through both the factual accounts and in the novel part, the reader learns why.

About the Author

Constance Cappel lived and worked in Poland from January 1994 to June 1997. She first served as a Business Advisor for the Peace Corps in the huge and mysterious city of Lodz, Poland, living in the former Lodz Ghetto, site of the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe and the second largest ghetto in Poland. She stayed in Poland after her Peace Corps tour of duty and moved to Warsaw where she worked as the Head of the Real Estate Agency for Price, Waterhouse. Dr. Cappel received her PhD degree from the Union Institute & University where she is now an adjunct faculty and vice-president of their Graduate Alumna Board. A Stairwell in Lodz is the second time that Dr. Cappel used the experimental form of interspersing fact and fiction in alternating chapters in a published book. She calls this form "faction," while others might call it "creative nonfiction."