39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Out of the ashes, January 7, 2002
This review is from: The Avengers (Paperback)
I was drawn to this book by the story of Abba Kovner--a Vilna native, a partisan and a poet. Although Cohen's writing is fine, it offers little poetic value. But like other readers, I could not put the book down.
This novel-like non-fiction offers many layers. The book opens with the author's discovery of his family and roots in Israel. Cohen's grandmother--one of nine siblings in Plosk, Poland--immigrated to America in 1920. The family intended for everyone to follow, but like so many poor Eastern European Jews, ran out of money. No one else was able to leave.
Several years after World War II, Cohen's grandmother learned from a former Polish neighbor that nearly every Jew in Plosk had perished. But her eldest brother's daughter, Ruzka Korczak, had survived as a partisan in the forests near Vilna, fighting with Abba Kovner and Vitka Kempner. She was the only member of the family in Poland who survived.
The book swiftly transports readers to the Vilna ghetto and a tale of survival and great courage. Shortly after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact and German divisions flooded her area and town, Ruzka determined to move to Warsaw, where she hoped to meet the Zionist Youth Guard, HaShomer HaTza'ir. She planned to return to Plosk a few months later, when things calmed down. About 10 miles outside Warsaw, with the city in flames, she ran into a friend who told her HaShomir had moved to Vilna, in the Russian zone. She traveled three weeks to reach Bialystok and then crossed at night into Vilna, where shortly afterwards she met Vitka Kempner and Abba Kovner.
At that time, 200,000 people lived in Vilna, a third of them Jewish. But the Jewish minority was heavily divided into factions--the communists, who distrusted Bundists, who distrusted Zionists, who distrusted Orthodox Jews. All of them distrusted assimilated Jews, and all feared the Soviet police, the NKVD. Threatened with arrest, Vitka fled Vilna, but returned weeks after the Nazis overtook both Vilna and her own location. On September 6, 1941, 30,000 Jews were forced into the Old Jewish Ghetto, where before only 1,000 had lived.
By then, the Jewish people were gravely threatened. Abba Kovner hid in a nearby convent. But rumors of the murder of thousands in the forest of Ponar brought him back to Vilna, at Vitka's behest, to hear the story from a single survivor named Sara.
At this dramatic juncture, Kovner realized that the Jewish people could escape only by battle. In December, 1941, he told fellow Ghetto residents that Ponar was a death trap and began to search for arms, an effort assisted by a former communist named Isaac Wittenberg, and Joseph Glassman. Together they located, bought and smuggled weapons into Vilna through the sewers, even obtaining grenades from the Mother Superior who had earlier hidden Kovner. Wittenberg was forced to surrender to the Nazis and committed suicide in prison.
By 1943, the Germans were taking Jews from the Ghetto by increasing thousands and Kovner recognized that most would never return. He planned his escape, taking Vitka, Ruzka and others with him into the forests to fight. Leaving his mother was the hardest thing he had ever done. Her last words to him--"What will become of me?"-- forever rang in his ears.
But Kovner put the survival of a few Jewish fighters above his family. When World War II was over, he went on fighting, alongside David Ben-Gurion, for his people's right to their ancient Jewish homeland of Israel.
Nowadays we sometimes use the word hero lightly. Kovner and two daring female fighters really earned the label: They helped to lead the Jewish people triumphantly out of the ashes into an era of rebirth.
We owe Rich Cohen our gratitude for bringing these heroes once again to life. Alyssa A. Lappen
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kids who raged, "We won't go like humble lambs!", February 7, 2003
This review is from: The Avengers (Paperback)
I'm a slower reader. I get bored by a lot of books but this was impossible to put down. Rich Cohen covers the pivotal story of young people confronted with outrageous injustice. While others were trying to placate the Nazis & the local Gentiles these teenagers said: NO--!
The writing is very good with a combination of novelistic and journalistic styles.
I feel very enriched by having read it and recommend the book 100%.
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