Warsaw Boy

A Memoir of a Wartime Childhood

By: Andrew Borowiec

Narrated by: Tim Bruce

Poland suffered terribly under the Nazis. By the end of the war, six million had been killed.

On 1 August 1944, Andrew Borowiec, a 15-year-old volunteer in the Resistance, lobbed a grenade from a Warsaw apartment block onto some German soldiers below - he felt he had come of age.

Over that summer Andrew faced danger at every moment. Wounded the day after his 16th birthday, he was captured as he lay in a makeshift cellar hospital. Here he learned a lesson: there were decent Germans as well as bad. This is an extraordinary tale of survival and defiance.

©2015 Andrew Borowiec (P)2015 Oakhill Publishing

Critic reviews

"A subtle, well observered autobiography. Beautifully paced." ( The Times)

"A timely, angry, terribly moving and drily amusing account of an especially dark period in Poland's often tragic history." ( Telegraph)

"In this packed, wise memoir, Borowiec describes a journey that is nothing less than an odyssey through the most harrowing of circumstances. Given the fate of many of his fellow Poles, that there was a happy ending for Borowiec is remarkable." ( The National)

"A story of defiance, bravery and survival. Warsaw Boy is a real-life Boy's Adventure Story - Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones." (Shirley Conran)

"This account of the Warsaw Uprising is both harrowing and full of human and even humorous touches.... The result is an important addition to our understanding of what was happening in Poland during the war years." (Denis MacShane, The Tablet)

"The best-ever account of what is was like to be young and fighting in the Warsaw Rising." (Neal Ascherson Sunday Herald, 'Books of the Year')