Pam Jenoff
Presently an attorney in private practice, Pam Jenoff served as vice-consul for the U.S. State Department in Krakow, Poland, and as the special assistant to the secretary of the army at the Pentagon. She is an expert on Poland and the Holocaust, and has published several scholarly articles and been honored by a number of organizations for her work in this field. Ms. Jenoff lives in the Philadelphia area.
THE KOMMANDANT’S GIRL
(Mira, March 2007)
Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days Emma’s husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city’s decrepit, moldering Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob’s Catholic cousin, Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile.
Emma’s already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety—and her marriage vows—in order to help Jacob’s cause. As the atrocities of war intensify, so does Emma’s relationship with the Kommandant, building to a climax that will risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves.
