These two small books deal in totally different ways with the plight of Jews on both sides of the ghetto walls in Poland during the Second World War. The two main characters Marek Edelman and Henryk Beck had little in common with each other apart from their Jewish background and medical profession.

W Czterdziestą Rocznicę is primarily a collection of recollections by Marek Edelman, a Bundist and one of the ŻOB commanders during the Ghetto Uprising. Henryka Becka ‘Bunkier 1944 roku’ is a collection of artistic recollections of a 110-day-long stay in the ruins of deserted Warsaw following the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

W Czterdziestą Rocznię, edited by Józef Garliński, was published on the fortieth anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising. It contains an introduction by Garliński following by the complete text of Edelman's Getto walczy (Udzial Bundu w obronie getta warszawskiego), originally published in Poland in 1945. This is followed by two interviews with Edelman, one which the Polish journalist Hanna Krall originally included in her book Zdpzyc przed Panem Bogiem (Kraków, 1977) and the second appeared in the Solidarity weekly, Tygodnik Mazowsze. There is also an open letter of Edelman explaining why he refused the invitation to participate in the Honorary Committee for the Celebrations of the 40th Anniversary of the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, which were officially organized in Warsaw in 1983 and were the cause of considerable controversy. Also included in the book are a selection of documents from the archives of the Polish Underground Study Trust in London and those of W. Bartoszewski. They relate to certain problems raised in the_ texts e.g. German regulations, Polish reaction to the plight of the Jews, help for the Jews, death sentences carried out by the Polish underground on Poles for betraying Jews. Finally there is the entire text of Pope John Paul II's homily given during the mass he took on the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in June 1979.

Edelman’ s main text having been written so soon after the event is a very authentic and vivid one. It deals not only with the fighting but the whole question of attitudes in the Ghetto, especially those of the Bund, and thus it has a specific political and historical value.