Rulka Langer
Rulka Langer was born into a family of distinguished Polish intellectuals, writers and statesmen.
She was a modern "career woman" before that concept was fashionable. She attended Vassar College in the U.S. on a scholarship and upon graduation returned to Poland and worked in Warsaw as a copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and in the Economic Research Department of the Bank of Poland.
Fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland with her son and daughter in early 1940, Langer joined her husband, who was a member of the Polish diplomatic corps posted in the U.S.
She wrote "The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt" in 1942 to help explain to Americans the devastation of World War II for the ordinary human beings caught in it.
“War teaches us honesty. Honesty with ourselves. For war is a merciless debunker; it debunks great and small alike....When bombs are crashing and fires raging, people are exactly what they are -- nothing more, nothing less. At such times you have the sensation of standing morally naked in public, and you will never be able to forget it, try as hard as you may.”
Rulka Langer