The Warsaw Orphan

The Warsaw Orphan (2021) is a historical fiction novel by Australian author Kelly Rimmer, a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author known for emotionally resonant novels set during World War II, such as The Things We Cannot Say. Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the narrative is told from the dual perspectives of Roman Gorka, a Jewish teenager trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, and Emilia Slaska, a Catholic girl living on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw under a false identity. Their lives intersect through underground resistance and rescue networks as they navigate the horrors of the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the subsequent Warsaw Uprising. The novel explores themes including The Moral Complexity of Survival, Memory as a Form of Resistance, and Breaking Cycles of Violence.

This guide refers to the 2021 Graydon House edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, child death, rape, racism, religious discrimination, suicidal ideation, and substance use.

Plot Summary

The narrative unfolds through alternating perspectives in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland, between 1942 and the immediate postwar years. It centers on two young protagonists: Roman Gorka, a Jewish teenager confined within the Warsaw Ghetto, and Emilia Slaska, a Catholic girl living under the false name of Elżbieta Rabinek on the “Aryan” side of the city.

Roman shoulders responsibility for his family—his mother, Maja; stepfather, Samuel; younger brother, Dawidek; and infant half-sister, Eleonora—struggling to barter for food and necessities as resources dwindle under German-imposed ghettoization. Their overcrowded apartment houses several families, with disease and starvation ever present. Roman’s anger and guilt intensify as he feels powerless against the suffering around him, particularly after he takes bread from a dying child to feed his ailing mother.

On the “Aryan” side, Emilia has lost her father and brother—both executed by the Nazis for resistance activities—and she now lives with her adoptive parents, Truda and Mateusz, and her uncle Piotr under a false identity to evade German detection. Seeking a sense of purpose, Emilia covertly befriends Sara Wieczorek, a nurse and social worker in their building. When she is caught visiting Sara, her parents reluctantly permit the friendship, which becomes pivotal when Emilia witnesses Sara sheltering Jewish orphans smuggled out of the ghetto sewer system. Emilia assists Sara, learning firsthand about the rescue network and the plight of ghetto children.

As conditions in the ghetto deteriorate, Roman becomes friends with Chaim (known as Pigeon), a fellow worker with ties to the underground. Chaim informs Roman of the exterminations at camps like Chełmno and Treblinka, casting doubt on Samuel’s optimism about German intentions. Deportations soon begin, targeting the most vulnerable. Roman’s access to food comes from working shifts at Andrzej’s youth center, a resistance hub and soup kitchen.

After witnessing the suffering of orphans, Emilia insists on helping Sara and her supervisor, Matylda Mazur, with Jewish child rescues. She receives training to instruct children in Catholic prayers and the Polish language, preparing them for placement with Polish families or orphanages. She begins smuggling supplies into the ghetto, using a legitimate epidemic-control pass obtained by Sara’s network. However, she carries a forged identity card, which poses a grave risk to the entire operation if discovered.

The growing threat of deportation pushes the Gorka family toward crisis. Eleonora, gravely malnourished, cannot survive long. Sara and Emilia visit and offer to rescue Dawidek and Eleonora. Samuel initially refuses to separate the family, but after the mass deportation of children from the Korczak Orphanage, he yields, and Eleonora is sedated and smuggled out by Sara and Emilia, who faces the perilous task of passing the infant through a German checkpoint alone. Dawidek’s evacuation proves too difficult.

Large-scale deportations soon follow. Returning home one day, Roman discovers his entire family and most neighbors gone, victims of the latest roundup. Chaim confirms the reality of mass exterminations at Treblinka. Left alone and consumed by grief and rage, Roman joins Chaim and Andrzej in the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, the ghetto’s armed resistance.

Meanwhile, trauma compels Emilia to withdraw from her rescue work when she witnesses the orphans she once aided being deported while clutching the dolls that her family crafted. She returns only when Sara appeals for her help again. When Sara and Matylda discover Emilia’s false identity, they debate her continued involvement; after Matylda’s arrest and execution, Sara is left as the sole guardian of records of the rescued children.

In April 1943, the Germans launch final deportations, and the remaining ghetto inhabitants, including Roman, Chaim, and Andrzej, stage the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. For weeks, they mount a desperate defense as the Germans lay siege with tanks, fire, and explosives. Amid devastating losses, Chaim sacrifices himself to save Roman, pushing him into the sewers during a retreat while detonating a grenade to kill pursuing Germans and allowing Roman a chance to escape.

Emerging from the sewers, wounded and bereft, Roman escapes through a breach in the ghetto wall into “Aryan” Warsaw and seeks sanctuary at Emilia’s apartment, where her family and Sara shelter him. A surgeon and Sara work to save him from a gunshot wound, hiding Roman for weeks. Overcome with survivor’s guilt and vengeance, Roman contemplates the enormity of his losses.

As years pass, the story follows the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Roman joins the Polish Home Army and the Gray Ranks, preparing for the citywide uprising. Emilia’s family arranges to flee to Lodz but is trapped in the city when the Uprising erupts early. Amid intense street battles, Roman is severely wounded in a tank explosion; Kacper (or “Sword”), a boy from Roman’s squad, is also injured. Roman is hospitalized, and Emilia visits him and confesses her love but asserts that they cannot be together. Traumatized by her wartime experiences, Emilia says that she seeks peace, not continued conflict.

Several months after the Uprising collapses, the Soviets occupy Poland. Trapped in Warsaw during the Uprising and then forced to evacuate with all other civilians after the city’s fall, Emilia and her adoptive parents are among thousands sent to a transit camp, and they then resettle in Lodz. While searching for Mateusz at the market, Emilia is raped by Soviet soldiers. She reunites with her family after she is rescued by a Polish couple. During this time, Emilia discovers a hidden jar in their former apartment’s courtyard, containing Matylda’s records of over 2,000 rescued Jewish children. With assistance, these records are entrusted to Jewish community leaders, who begin the search for the children’s families. Emilia finds Sara working at a nearby convent, and Sara informs her that she is pregnant. Supported by Sara and Truda, Emilia retreats to the convent to carry the pregnancy to term, planning to put the baby up for adoption.

Roman and Kacper, taken as prisoners of war to a camp in Nuremberg, Germany, endure harsh conditions. Roman aids Kacper through an amputation and, after liberation by the Americans, waits for reunification with Emilia and his sister, Eleonora. Returning to Warsaw, Roman finds Emilia pregnant and engaged in the work of recovery from the trauma of the assault. Roman writes letters to Emilia, expressing enduring love and hope. Over time, Emilia reads the letters but is not ready to reunite. Eventually, she decides to give the baby, named Anatol, to Truda and Mateusz to raise as their own. She tells Roman that if he wants to be in her life, he will have to accept this decision. 

The family begins rebuilding. Roman is imprisoned and tortured by the Soviets for his resistance activities, and Mateusz sacrifices his nascent textiles business to secure the money for a bribe to get Roman released. After this experience, Roman swears off armed resistance and studies law, seeking a peaceful life with Emilia. He works as a clerk for another lawyer while attending the newly reopened University of Warsaw. 

Roman and Emilia eventually reconcile. Roman embraces Anatol as Emilia’s brother and as part of their shared family. Sara locates Eleonora, who is orphaned and ill. Roman and Emilia travel to Częstochowa to meet her, presenting themselves as an engaged couple soon to be married to provide Eleonora with a stable home. Caring for Eleonora, they commit to forming a new family and building a future together as Warsaw and Poland slowly rebuild in the aftermath of destruction.