If something exists, why is it so hard to find?

I have been blessed recently with the acquisition of a number of "reading" acquaintances in Poland, or at least the discovery that some of my previous acquaintances are also readers. (You can't believe the laughs and pitying looks they gave me when I told them I read Anielka by Prus. Apparently it's a standard book assigned as school reading, and so nobody likes it. Well, it was depressing.) I've enjoyed chatting with these ladies about reading, although quite often we do not read the same books, because for the most part we do not read in the same language.

During our worship services, we've always included a time for a short children's story. Recently, we acquired a Polish version of Heroes of the Faith by Dave and Neta Jackson. We've been reading about people such as Amy Carmichael, Adoniram Judson, and Hudson Taylor. The adults have been absolutely riveted by these stories. With the exception of David Livingstone, no one in Poland has ever heard of these people, regardless of whether they have been believers for forty years or one. One man, commenting about David Livingstone, said that although he had heard the name, he had never had the faintest idea about who he was or what he was doing in Africa.

Now, these little mini-biographies, written for children, do not begin to convey the depth of their faith or the insights that can be learned from reading the writings of these Christian "heroes." During a recent discussion about an episode from Amy Carmichael's life, it occurred to me that the lady I was talking to would very much enjoy reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. I asked her if she was familiar with the story, and she had never heard of it, nor Corrie Ten Boom either. I promised to look for a copy in Polish for her.

And this I have done. I have discovered that the book was translated into Polish, and published under the the title Bezpieczna Kryjówka. But I have been completey unable to locate a copy. I have searched on every imaginable internet possibility in Poland, in the US, in the UK, and in Germany. I have not found a single copy for sale, although I did locate a copy in a library somewhere here in Poland, which does not necessarily make it accessible. Libraries here do not always lend their books, and only allow reading on-site.

So I've reached a dead end. All I can do is share the title and author and hope that someday, sometime, a copy will turn up for her to read. There are copies out there somewhere. But I can't find a single one!