In the summer of 1957, in Gdańsk, four boys and one girl, classmates, run in the woods, run in the cemetery, play soccer, play war. In an abandoned brickworks they find unexploded ammunition left over from the Germans and Russians. And real guns. Their leader is David Weiser, a thin boy of few words, Jewish. Weiser doesn’t go to Sunday school, but he can hypnotize panthers, put a bullet hole through an Adolf Hitler stamp at a hundred meters, and levitate while Elka plays the panpipes. His classmates will never break the oath of secrecy, never tell the principal or the militiaman, or pompous, sadistic M-ski, the nature teacher, or the stern, censer-swinging Father Dudak, what really happened in the hollow behind the firing range. 

Who Was David Weiser? is an adventure, a mystery, a book about growing up in a world divided between Poles and Germans, Catholics and Communists, children, adults, and madmen. Pawel Huelle, a native of Gdańsk, a new author of great originality, has written an entertaining, heartwarming, masterful novel.