The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman

In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of 1943, Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow, possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: she has blue eyes and blond hair. With these, and a set of false papers, she has slipped out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. At times a dark lament, at others a sly and sardonic thriller, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma's arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw's Jews are about to meet their deaths in the burning ghetto. About the Author Born in Warsaw in 1928, Andrzej Szczypiorski took part in the city's uprising against German occupation in 1944 and was subsequently sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war, he worked as author and publisher and became a member of the executive board of the Polish PEN Club and the Writer's Association. In December 1981, he was interned in a camp and remained a prisoner there until spring 1982. In 1989, he was chosen as a candidate by Solidarnosc and elected to the Polish Senate by the people. He received the Austrian State Award for European Literature and the German Federal Republic Order of Merit. Szczypiorski died in Warsaw in 2000.