As a counterpoint to her more comprehensive scholarly work on the holocaust, this book provides several personal vignettes of that period in history. Beginning in New York City the account covers making arrangements for the trip, the author's stay in Vilna, a center of Jewish culture in Poland including elements of daily life, cultural, and political events, her narrow escape from Poland as the Nazi invasion progresses, and the finally agonizing wait in New York as news of the insuing catastrophy arrives in bits and pieces. This book provides insight into what it was like to live through that period in history, and may help those close to them to understand people who actually lived through it.