Note: My book
While Europe Slept was first published by Doubleday in 2006. Now the Stapis publishing house has put out a Polish edition, translated by Tadeusz Skrzyszowski. Given that the book is fifteen years old, Stapis asked for a new preface. Here it is. This book, which appeared first in English, has already been translated into several other languages, but it is a special pleasure to see it published in Polish. My father’s parents were both Polish, although they came from municipalities that, in their time, were located in the Austrian Empire and that are now part of Ukraine, not far from the Polish border. My grandfather was a native of the Galician town of Brody; my grandmother was raised in the Galician city of Krystynopol (now Chervonohrad). He emigrated to America before World War I; she left her childhood home – which was blasted half to bits during exchanges of gunfire between the Central Powers and the Russians – during the war, traveling all alone at th