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Crossing the River

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I had the privilege to meet Shalom Eilati, a distant cousin of a lifelong friend, while in Jerusalem a number of years ago. Shalom is one of a handful of child survivors of the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, and Crossing the River is Shalom's vivid personal recollection of his experiences as a child in the ghetto; his escape - arranged by his mother - and hiding with brave Lithuanians for the remainder of the war; and his perilous journey - alone at 12 years of age - across Soviet-occupied Lithuania and Poland until he reached freedom in West Germany. From there he reached British-occupied Palestine a few weeks before his 13th birthday.

This book is much more than "just another Holocaust survivor's story." It is beautifully written in compelling language that often borders on the poetic. The unbelievable he describes with amazing clarity and detail. The unimaginable he leaves to the reader's imagination.

Shalom shares with the reader his struggles to answer questions that, ultimately, are beyond answer. At the same time, he tempers his story with connections to his life (and the life of the Jewish people) in Israel and beyond after the war. It is a story that encompasses both the horrors of the Holocaust and the hope and rebirth of an individual, the Jewish people, and all of humanity after such an unspeakable experience.

Crossing the River is in its third printing in Hebrew in Israel. Vern Lenz's translation into English is vibrant, and the University of Alabama Press is to be commended for publishing a book that needs to be read by this and future generations.

This book is a gripping and beautifully written memoir of Shalom Eilati's life from 1941 to 1946 when he was 8 to 13 years old. Unlike most memoirs about the holocaust written by survivors, Shalom Eilati presents a very detailed and vivid recall through the eyes of a child. This is not only Shalom Eilati's story, but the story of the handful of child survivors who against all odds were shepherded to safety by resourceful family members and brave righteous gentiles. As a child survivor myself, I feel that this book is a must read for child survivors and their families, as well as the families of those who perished.

Among Holocaust memoirs, this book is very special. The story, a very readable account of a boy who at eight survives the Nazi destruction of Lithuanian Jewry and comes out at war's end at twelve -- all seen through the child's eyes --is compelling in itself. The first part tells of his life among the murderous events of the Holocaust. After liberation he finds himself alone, family gone except for his father, who he learns has come barely alive out of a concentration camp in Germany. In the second part we follow the boy's search for his father. Taken up by the Brichah, the underground flight westward of Jews still in turmoil and in danger in the east, he finds his father in a DP camp. In the third part, he makes his way alone to Palestine where he will build his life. What is really special is the fourth part, where the grown man, Shalom Eilati, having become a successful scientist, returns to Lithuania to the sites of his terrors and survival as a way of resolving still haunting questions that trouble his memory. This last part is a kind of prism through which we sense or see all the previous parts of his journey of survival. Eilati tries to establish truth in his childhood memories, and do justice to the people and events that marked his survival. This account goes far toward answering the question we, outside the events, might ask: what is it like to live with the memory of such terrors and miraculous survivals? I understand that the book's original Hebrew was considered powerful and beautiful, and went through several editions. This translation is worthy of that original. Through it we see something of how it is to live through and with memories full of nightmares, and yet find in memory itself a clarifying -- perhaps even a redeeming -- prism.

"Crossing the RIver" by Shalom Eilati is a magnificent book. I have read many Holocaust books and none have more profoundly taken me into the life of a child in the Holocaust than this one. My mother is a Holocaust survivor, and in fact, survived the ghetto on which this book is based. I couldn't put this book down and spent nights seemingly reliving the events depicted.

The tale of a boy surrounded by so much evil, who somehow, by luck or by miracle, survives to bear witness is, in and of itself, moving. But the eloquence and detail with which the story is told, makes it not just a story, but a transforming event, one which stayed with me long after I finished reading.

Gila Fortinsky

Crossing The River affected me in a way no other book I've ever read has. The events in these early years of Shalom's life are so intense, sometimes so horrific, that it helps me to comprehend how, after so many years, they could still be recalled in such detail. Such experiences are seared into one's memory in a way as indelible as the numbers on the arms of camp survivors. It reads like a novel in many instances, and yet, is all too real. For me it brought a new connection to the Holocaust since Shalom is a cousin I've yet to meet. I learned of him and other relatives unknown to me about 18 years ago when contacted by a cousin researching our family tree. That was when I first learned that I had 11 relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Shalom's book has been another major part of the evolution of my feelings of being connected on a more personal level.

Unlike Anne Frank, Shalom Eilati was a child who miraculously survived the Holocaust. He has written a detailed masterpiece of personal memories and rediscovery. His true story bears witness to, and honors the memories of, the thousands of Lithuanian Jews who perished; including members of my own family mentionned in his book. I agree with the other reviews posted about how this book draws you into the world of the Kovno ghetto. I was astounded by his details and desriptions right from the first page. You feel you are there with him seeing all through his eyes, feeling all the emotions. This book should be added to high school Holocaust reading requirements along with "The Diary of Anne Frank". It is a remarkable, beautifully written account and a triumph of the human spirit.

I've read many Holocaust memoirs but for me this is absolutely the best. First of all, the author is my age so answers that old nagging question -"What if?" The manner in which he writes is so natural as he recalls his childhood, questioning his memories and decisions and expressing both his pain and his joy. From the beginning I was totally immersed in his first impressions of a war suddenly on his doorstep (warplanes appearing in the sky over a tennis match), his first worries (is it still safe to observe the world from his windowsill?). I was stunned by the prosaic events surrounding the move to the ghetto, the decisions to be made between what they must have and what must be left behind, and the fact that the ghetto was part of the city in which they lived. I read this not only as the child I might have been but also as a mother and as a sister. Eilati presents to us not just the terrors of the ghetto but also the every day activities of adults and children forcibly removed from their normal lives. Then he takes us beyond the ghetto walls to the months he spent hiding among strangers and his wandering following Liberation. We are always aware of the psychological damage that persists but awed by the resilience of the human spirit. Since I first read Hersey's "The Wall", it has lived with me. This too is a book I will not forget. The difference is - this is not fiction.

I read portions of this amazing book as it was being written as I am related to the writer, but when I read it in total it took on a life of its own...I couldn't put it down. The writing itself is so incredible, I could feel as if I was there every step of the way, I could see what was merely described in words as if I was seeing it as pictures. This book should be widely read. It's a piece of history that must be recorded.

"Crossing the River" is a powerful and impactful memoir written by Shalom Eilati. Shalom is a special man who has taken his memories and pain and has created a picture for us all who read the book. This picture of life before the Kovno ghetto, during and afterwards defines and describes with clarity and emotion a most horrific time in Jewish history and in Shalom's personal family history. For an eleven year old boy to fight to save his life with the help of numerous righteous individuals and loose his closest family members is hard for us to imagine but critical for us to know about and keep in our memories.

Thank you Shalom for this powerful, painful telling of YOUR story. The eloquent writing and descriptive vocabulary add much to the picture of hardship, loss, pain and also HOPE that you have given us.

With admiration,
Zelda Braun

Record Of The loss Of innocence
"Crossing The River" by Shalom Eilati. Translated by Vern Lenz. University of Alabama Press, 2008.

This is a very sensitive record of the loss of childhood innocence by the author during the Holocaust in Lithuania. As a young boy (10-11 years old), the author was witness to the Red Army's "protective custody" of Lithuania, the invasion by the Third Reich (June 1941) and years of oppression during the German occupation. This bare-bones summary is common to so many stories of the World War II. In this book, however, the author, Shalom Eilati, has been able to capture the shock and loss of childhood innocence as events remove first, his father, then his sister and finally, his mother. I have watched one of my young granddaughters, sitting in the lap of her mother, become shocked, begin to cry and turn to look at her mother, when a nurse stuck an IV needle into the child's arm. How could the mother permit the child to be hurt? In this book, written more than half a century after the events, the author is able to capture the sense of shock and betrayal as his entire childhood world collapsed around him.

He begins with a very vivid image of refugees streaming from Kovno on June 22 1941. Kovno is present day Kaunas, Lithuania). Then, chapter after chapter, he recounts the conquest of Lithuania, the German advance into Russia, the driving of the Jews into the ghetto, the rations, the internal fighting within the ghetto, the loss of his father, then his sister and finally his mother. "Mother doesn't come home". Page 89).

There is a sense of recrimination in the description of how his father was taken away. As with so many during the War, the father obeyed orders to assemble at given place and time. If he had not gone, who knows, he would have been with his family during the ghetto time in the war. This event is recorded with a sense of the loss of trust a child has in his adults.

The book does not end with the end of hostilities. In the chapter, "Second Year, Seven Journeys", the author tells how he was finally reunited with his father, after escaping from the Soviet occupied East: Lithuania, Poland and East Germany.

All in all, a very sensitive account of child affected so terribly by the war.