“In the Garden of Memory” by Joanna Olczak-Roniker, a Polish writer and screenwriter, is a book from the category of great literature. It is dedicated to the story of one Jewish family who chose the path of Polish assimilation, but the mirror of the destinies of its heroes reflects the uniqueness of Poland and its culture. “The heroes of this “personal” story, shown against the backdrop of History with a capital H, are close relatives of the author: grandmother, her relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins. Assimilated Jews are the Polish intelligentsia. Hard-working positivists who saw their main task in work - to serve the people. Crazy romantics who believed that they could shake the world to its core. Both of them later found themselves in the devilishly difficult conditions of totalitarianism: communist and fascist... The most talented screenwriter would not have come up with such intricacies. Only life can create and mix up human destinies in such a dramatic way,” Andrzej Wajda writes about the book. Joanna Olczak-Roniker’s book was awarded Poland’s highest national literary prize, the Nike, in 2002.