On September 1, 1939, the all-powerful German army invaded Poland with lightning speed which became known as the Blitzkrieg. This began the most brutal murderous regime in human history, a place where healthy men and women were turned into slaves, where the old and young were sent to their deaths in concentration camps and where the goal was to exterminate the Jewish people. This is the story of a man and woman who fall in love only to have to find a way to survive this horror.
The Galicia region of Southern Poland was a hotbed of Jewish life for 200 years before World War II. The Jewish population, although subject to much anti-Semitism, thrived, living and worshiping in relative peace.
A Rose Blooms in the Desert focuses on Galician Shtetls, small towns with large Orthodox Jewish communities. Those living in the shtetl lived in a traditional, stable culture with limited outside influence.
The story focuses on the town of Pyzsnica, with a small population of 200 Jewish people. The town, just east of the San River, experienced an increased population shortly after the start of the war, as life was relatively peaceful there early in the conflict.
To the west of the San River was the city of Stalowa Wola, a large industrial town. It’s suburb Rozwadow had a shtetl population of 2,000 but shortly after Stalowa Wola’s ammunition storage facility was bombed and invaded by the Nazi’s, the Jews of Rozwadow were expelled from their homes. As they fled east towards Russia, Miriam’s family stopped in Pyzsnica where she met and fell in love with Meyer, a former corporal in the Polish army.