There was a prob­lem. The ghet­to bench law — the rule forc­ing Jew­ish stu­dents to sit in a seg­re­gat­ed bench in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms that was increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in Poland in the 1930s — was insti­tut­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw in the fall of 1937. But in my newest draft of my his­tor­i­cal nov­el, I’d shift­ed parts of the sto­ry around, and the ghet­to bench­es were sud­den­ly hap­pen­ing in the spring. (Les­son learned: always write fic­tion in a place with lim­it­ed sea­sons so you can chop and change bits with­out hav­ing to end­less­ly rewrite weath­er.) But could I moral­ly alter the date of this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry rule’s imple­men­ta­tion from fall 1937 to spring 1938? I was rid­dled with worry.

One of my men­tors on the project, a nov­el­ist, tried to shake me out of my angsty his­to­ri­an armor. ​“Judy! No one knows any­thing about the ghet­to bench­es, and your read­ers won’t mind if you move them by a few weeks. Besides, it’s a nov­el – it’s fine!” But was it? After years of work­ing on a non­fic­tion book that had to be right, I was now writ­ing a make-believe sto­ry. Shift­ing my mind­set from doc­u­ment­ing his­to­ry to cre­at­ing his­tor­i­cal fic­tion was not always easy as I was faced with myr­i­ad instances where I need­ed to alter when real life events occurred for my char­ac­ters and plot. 

My last book, The Light of Days: The Untold Sto­ry of Women Resis­tance Fight­ers in Hitler’s Ghet­tos, told the true sto­ry of young Jew­ish women and teenage girls who fought the Nazis with­in Pol­ish ghet­tos, work­ing as secret couri­ers, blow­ing up Nazis trains, and plan­ning ghet­to upris­ings. I was shar­ing a Holo­caust his­to­ry that had not been wide­ly told, about real peo­ple, and I felt a great respon­si­bil­i­ty to tell the real-life accounts as cor­rect­ly as could be. As a for­mer aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­an and muse­um researcher, I had pre­vi­ous­ly found myself on the schol­ar­ly stand and had super­vi­sors who instilled in me the impor­tance of his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy for insti­tu­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty, I wrote TLOD antic­i­pat­ing cross­fire and back­lash. That book had sev­en­ty-three pages of end­notes and bib­li­og­ra­phy, and it was a select bib­li­og­ra­phy at that. 

Writ­ing TLOD also led me to ask ques­tions about the world that cre­at­ed these brazen, dar­ing and lip­stick-and-pants-wear­ing young Jew­ish women. I began to look into 1930s Poland, and found it was noth­ing like the crum­bling and impov­er­ished grey shtetl I’d imag­ined. Jew­ish women were edu­cat­ed, eman­ci­pat­ed, and employed. War­saw over­flowed with the­aters, a flour­ish­ing lit­er­a­ture scene, and night­clubs with revolv­ing dance­floors and fash­ion shows. It was called ​“the Paris of the North.” Fas­ci­nat­ed by this set­ting that I knew so lit­tle about (but should have known!), and inspired by the hun­dreds of mem­oirs I’d read by Jew­ish women in Poland, as well as my own two grand­moth­ers who spent their young adult­hoods in the Pol­ish cap­i­tal, I decid­ed to explore this rich set­ting in fic­tion. My pro­tag­o­nists, the feisty Fan­ny and the intel­lec­tu­al Zosia, were imme­di­ate­ly born in my head and I was thrilled to final­ly be able to guilt­less­ly make up dialogue! 

But switch­ing gen­res some­times left me par­a­lyzed. It wasn’t that I wasn’t imag­i­na­tive. Deep in my dig­i­tal files is an unpub­lished nov­el fea­tur­ing God as a Bikram yoga devo­tee with a large dog and a younger girl­friend who’s camp­ing out in his base­ment sub­let in West Chelsea; I recent­ly did the rounds pitch­ing an ani­mat­ed TV series about a pipe-smok­ing Boston Brah­min suf­fragette who is hav­ing an affair with a sar­don­ic ghost. But this was dif­fer­ent. Not only had I spent years writ­ing fac­tu­al­ly about this peri­od, but this was a sto­ry relat­ed to the Holo­caust. I felt a great respon­si­bil­i­ty to share it with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and a degree of verac­i­ty. Indeed, the truth of the time and place is a great part of the novel’s draw; it is very impor­tant for me to share this large­ly mis­con­ceived world which so resem­bles our own. Inter­war Poland was rife with con­tra­dic­tion. The Jew­ish and Pol­ish peo­ples were nego­ti­at­ing their post-World War One iden­ti­ties in light of geopol­i­tics and mod­ernism, con­sid­er­ing ques­tions like are we, Poles, an eth­nic-nation state or a diverse coun­try? Are we, Jews, a nation, a reli­gion or a cul­ture? Mean­while they cre­at­ed and con­sumed art pro­lif­i­cal­ly — jazz shows, art exhibits, com­e­dy sketch­es, dance com­pe­ti­tions. Pic­ture Josephine Bak­er per­form­ing to ador­ing crowds. At the same time, democ­ra­cy was threat­ened, the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty was divid­ed into var­i­ous polit­i­cal fac­tions, and nation­al­is­tic and Nazi ide­ol­o­gy began to spread, in par­tic­u­lar, in uni­ver­si­ties. I want­ed to high­light these time­ly real­i­ties, but was con­front­ed by the ques­tion of what could be changed, ethically? 

I thought of my favorite fic­tion­al his­tor­i­cal books and TV series of which there are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds. Some of my absolute tops are the zani­est of all—The Great, Anoth­er Peri­od. These nar­ra­tives are very far removed from his­to­ry, absur­dist and ridicu­lous some might say. But still I learned about the time and place. I even looked things up when I won­dered what real­ly hap­pened. (How much opi­um did they smoke?!) These mad­cap shows moved me to research. 

Then I thought of my own expe­ri­ences adapt­ing The Light of Days into a movie. As I shared with my writ­ing teams, I had no prob­lem enhanc­ing rela­tion­ships and mold­ing com­pos­ite char­ac­ters; I said an uncom­fort­able ok to some gra­tu­itous seduc­tion and reluc­tant­ly agreed to a bit of sex­ing up. But when one writer sug­gest­ed a scene where a train full of Jews wear­ing kip­pahs rolls out of Poland into Hun­gary on a great escape ride in 1944, I put my foot down. This, I knew instinc­tive­ly, was too far a fic­tion, espe­cial­ly for this real­is­tic Holo­caust project. And it wasn’t nec­es­sary for the story. 

What needs to be con­served and what can be altered for the sake of the sto­ry? How should I bal­ance my instinct to pre­serve and pro­tect the truth, with my need to cre­ate a com­pelling tale? Even in non­fic­tion, cer­tain ele­ments of the work are empha­sized and oth­ers omit­ted for the sake of clear and cohe­sive narrative. 

In mem­oir, we talk about the impor­tance of emo­tion­al truth over fac­tu­al truth. Some­times, we must serve the sto­ry. In this nov­el, I rea­soned, by allow­ing for a bit of flex­i­bil­i­ty with the his­tor­i­cal cal­en­dar, I was able to cre­ate sharp­er nar­ra­tive ten­sion, and thus, hope­ful­ly, a book where a read­er wants to turn each page – a book that utter­ly absorbs them. No one would appre­ci­ate any of this world if I couldn’t spin a siz­zling yarn. 

But I did add an author’s note at the end of the book, explain­ing all my research and alter­ations. Once a neu­rot­ic his­to­ri­an, always a neu­rot­ic historian.