Andrzej Szczypiorski (1924-2000) is one of the better-known figures of contemporary Polish literature. His novel Mass for the City Arras (Msza za miasto Arras, 1971), which deals with the religious fanaticism and intolerance in the Middle Ages, first brought him the literary fame. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he participated in the Warsaw Uprising(1944) and was deported to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin for a year. After the War, he worked as a diplomat and subsequently, as an editor of the Polish magazine "Polityka". In the 1980`s, he was an active member of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, and consequently, his relation with the Polish government was not friendly. His novel Poczatek(Beginning) was published in 1986 in Paris and translated from Polish into Germanin in 1987. The German version of this novel Die schone Frau Seidenman quickly became a bestseller in Germany. The relations between Jews, Germans, and Poles in this novel are different from the stereotypes in a lot of other Holocaust novels. Poczatek shows how Jews and Poles lived in Warsaw when the German forces occupied Poland during World War II. For example, the readers are introduced to Blutman, a Jewish Nazi collaborator, who is proud of his abilities in identifying Jews. The readers also meet Lady Irma, the wife of a Jewish doctor. Her father was also a Jewish doctor, but he was assimilated into Polish culture a long time ago. As both her father and her husband she had liberal views in regards to religious and racial issues, she was never conscious of being a Jew. Thus when Blutman takes her by force to the Gestapo, she denies that she is Jewish. Stuckler, a Gestapo officer frees her after a talk with M?ller, a German who was born and raised in Poland. M?ller also wears like the Gestapo officer the swastika on the lapel. Although Muller doesn`t know Lady Irma, he was asked by a Polish friend to help free her. In the novel, we also encounter a Jewish young man, who goes back to the ghetto from which he escaped. Suffering constantly from hunger and cold, he was tired of hiding himself in the dirty toilet and rubbish dump. Although he is indifferent to religion, he gets bad treatment, simply because he is Jewish. In addition, a Jewish girl who was raised Catholic by a Polish nun suddenly goes to Israel. There, she sees how the Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians. She realizes that regardless of ethnicity or nationality, in the history of mankind, the victors have always maltreated the victims of wars. Through the several types of characters this novel shows the groundlessness of the racial prejudice against the Germans, the Poles and the Jews.