Tales of Grabowski comprises two novellas, Transformations, and Escape, together with several short stories, all of which tell the story of David Gordon, a young Jew from Warsaw, who transforms himself into Wladyslaw Grabowski, a Polish stoker in the German merchant marine. Auerbach balances the internal tensions between Gordon's desire to fight for revenge and Grabowski's desperate need for survival. Throughout the war, involvement with espionage, with friends and smuggling, bring him ever closer to that thin line that separates life from death. Drawing on deeply personal experiences-the story of Auerbach's own survival-Transformations and Escape are undiscovered masterpieces of twentieth century writing.
About the Author
 JOHN AUERBACH was born in Warsaw in 1922, and served as a soldier in the Polish army at the beginning of the Second World War. During the German occupation, he escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and worked on German ships as a stoker under a false identity. He was caught trying to escape to Sweden in a stolen boat, and was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp. After to the war, he went to Sweden and worked on Swedish ships. Here, he joined the Mossad Aliyah B and
transported refugees to Israel for three years. He was captured by the British and was detained in a Cyprus camp for two years. On his release to Israel, he came to Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where he
was a skipper of fi shing boats.
After Officers Training in Acre, he served as a Chief Engineer in the Israeli Merchant Marines for fifteen ears. Upon the death of his son in the 1973 War, he left the sea and returned to the Kibbutz where he wrote and published twelve books of short stories and novellas (translated into Hebrew), as well as stories published in American literary magazines. Auerbach's short story, The Owl, was awarded First Prize in the first PEN/UNESCO Awards in 1993. He died in 2002.
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The Critics Praise:
"In his writing, Auerbach ... combines a wide erudition with a blunt, almost primitivist stylistic beauty. The two create a nearly unbearable authenticity of description, transforming memory into art while rescuing historical details that might never otherwise have been known... It is a world Graham Greene and Alan Furst have visited; Auerbach invests it with authenticity both would deeply admire."
NEW YORK TIMES
"First and foremost he is an outstanding story teller. His writing on the
Ghetto is among the most powerful I have ever read. I almost said the most
beautiful. There is a strong beauty in Auerbach’s style, a delicate irony which
shifts imperceptibly into intense wrenching anguish."
HA’ARETZ
"An artist of sharp and intense vision. An overwhelming sense of man’s
moral attrition against an indifferent universe."
THE JERUSALEM POST
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