Award-winning local author Lisa Barr never could have imagined just how "eerily relevant" her fourth book,
Goddess of Warsaw
, would be today when she began researching it more than two years ago. And yet, here we are, confronting the worst Jew-hatred since the end of World War II in the wake of the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Barr has always been "a proud Jewish author" and has never shied away from supporting Israel. Her writing career spans four novels and many years working as a journalist, including seven years as an editor at
The Jerusalem Post
.
Goddessof Warsaw
combines both these threads from Barr's professions, bringing together her journalist's eye for details and the real-world events of World War II with the drama of fiction. "I gravitate toward art, and every one of my books also has a news hook to them from my journalism background," she said.
She also stepped boldly into the fray of being a Jewish writer in a climate that is now openly hostile to Jewish and Israeli authors, performers, and artists of all types.
"We are facing harassment, cancellation, and what they call review-bombing," which is an orchestrated system of targeting Jewish writers and artists (as well as Jewish-owned businesses) with negative, often one-star, reviews across many platforms. In response, Barr stays "loud and proud," and helped found Artists Against Antisemitism, a nonprofit dedicated to combating Jew-hatred. "I could not stay silent, and I won't stay silent," she proclaimed.
The author's four books are infused with Jewish themes, chief among them Nazi-looted art, and the role of art more broadly. Her latest novel follows in the footsteps of her third book,
Woman on Fire
, a
New York Times
bestseller involving the quest for a painting stolen by the Nazis 75 years earlier for which Sharon Stone has already purchased the film options.
Barr's stories "really ask the question: how far would you go for your passion…would you kill for it, steal for it, or fight for it?" In
Goddess of Warsaw
, the heroine grapples with those questions and with "revenge and payback." Her novel weaves together a story "about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which is considered the most important revolt in World War II Jewish history."
Heroine Lena Browning (born Bina Blonski) travels between worlds, slipping in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, where about 400,000 Jews were confined to 1.3 square miles, because her blond hair and blue eyes masked her Jewish identity.
Browning survives the uprising and the final liquidation of the ghetto in May 1943 and ultimately, rises to fame in the United States as a femme-fatale and celebrated Hollywood actress. There, she uses her fame to exact revenge on Nazis living in America after the war (spoiler alert: it was easier to immigrate to this country, and others, as a former Nazi than as a Holocaust survivor). In Barr's tantalizing tale, Browning seeks payback for all of us.
A North Shore native and current resident, Barr did much of her research at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, where she was miraculously put in contact with a survivor of the uprising who happened to live just 15 minutes from the author. "It was really unbelievable to be in her presence and to hold her hand while she told me her whole story," Barr said. Details gathered in those interviews with "someone who was actually there, who smelled it, lived it, [and] survived it," infused her novel with "the realism it needs."
Barr's goal was to "showcase the darkest chapter of Jewish history and give it a Hollywood twist." A strong and resilient Jewish woman fighting Nazis both during and after the war may provide a small antidote to the heaviness of the Jewish world today.
Amy Shriberg, Ph.D., is a freelance writer and works in the Community Outreach and Engagement Department of JUF.
