At the height of the Nazi extermination campaign in the Warsaw Ghetto, a young Jewish woman, Irena, seeks the protection of her former lover, a young architect, Jan Malecki. By taking her in,
he puts his own life and the safety of his family at risk. Over a four-day period, Tuesday through Friday of Holy Week 1943, as Irena becomes increasingly traumatized by her situation, Malecki
questions his decision to shelter Irena in the apartment where Malecki, his pregnant wife, and his younger brother reside. Added to his dilemma is the broader context of Poles’ attitudes toward
the “Jewish question” and the plight of the Jews locked in the ghetto during the final moments of its existence. Few fictional works dealing with the war have been written so close in time to
the events that inspired them. No other Polish novel treats the range of Polish attitudes toward the Jews with such unflinching honesty. Jerzy Andrzejewski’s Holy Week (Wielki Tydzien, 1945),
one of the significant literary works to be published immediately following the Second World War, now appears in English for the first time.
