Heaven Hell and Purgatory: A Canadian Memoir

A Canadian Memoir of a Happy Polish Childhood, Nazi Horro, and Swedish Refuge

The personal narrative of Halina Maria Czajkowska Robinson (b.1927), the daughter of a Polish military officer, describing her experiences in Poland before and during World War II. After fleeing Zamosc for Warsaw in late 1940, she attended an underground school and later witnessed the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. She and her mother were arrested during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, transported to Auschwitz, and from there deported to Bergen-Belsen. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945, they were sent as displaced persons to Sweden, where Halina studied and became a chemical engineer. Resettled in Canada, she found work in a university laboratory, where her important observation led to the recognition of the first vinca alkaloid as a cure for childhood leukemia.