Black Swastika, Red Swastika

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 dont 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 Stalins and
the KGBs 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. Stalins death ends
all plans of Jewish deportation to Siberia.