Here, There Are No Sarahs [Paperback]

Sonia Shainwald Orbuch (Author), Fred Rosenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2009

Stripped of her name, 18 year-old Sonia Shainwald went to war without basic training, without equipment, without food or any of the essentials necessary to fight the German soldiers who used her native Poland as a proving ground on their way to conquer mother Russia. Urging her family and neighbors to leave a wretched hiding place during the liquidation of their Polish ghetto in 1942, she and her parents and uncle spent a brutal winter in the Russian forests and then joined a Soviet partisan brigade, which fought back heroically against the Germans and Ukrainians.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Here, There Are No Sarahs is especially salient because it deals with the little known phenomenon of Jews who fought back and explores the difficult role of women in the resistance .... uncommonly frank. --Michael Berenbaum, Founding Director United States Holocaust Museum, Professor of Theology, American Jewish University

In the pages of Here, There Are No Sarahs, I have come close to reliving the day-to-day horror and the day-to-day growth of intelligence and maturity that our heroine achieved. I have been greatly affected, and deeply praise Sonia Shainwald Orbuch for making me better by having read her book. I have relatives who are survivors, and some were even partisans, but never before had I grasped the totality of their experience. --Ed Asner

The woman's voice about partisan life in the forest is a most welcome addition to the Holocaust literature. --Nechama Tec, Holocaust Scholar, author of Defiance, Oxford University Press

About the Author

Sonia Shainwald Orbuch was born and raised in Lubomi, Poland. During the liquidation of her shtetl in October 1942, she and her parents and uncle fled to the forest and, after enduring a brutal winter in the open, joined the Fyodorov partisans and resisted Nazi oppression. For more than half a century, Sonia has been highly active in numerous Jewish organizations in New York and California. She now lives in Marin County and speaks about her experiences in schools and community centers.


Fred Rosenbaum is the founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, the largest school for adult Jewish education in the American West. He has taught modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at several Bay Area universities and has written four books, most recently the award-winning Taking Risks, co-authored with the former Soviet partisan Joseph Bell.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: RDR Books (February 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571431306
• ISBN-13: 978-1571431301
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > History > Asia > Belarus
  • #84 in Books > History > Europe > Ukraine

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memoir of a Jewish Forest Partisan, April 30, 2009

By 

Michael N. Dobkowski - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Here, There Are No Sarahs (Paperback)

I highly recommend this memoir to anyone who is interested in the topics of Jewish partisan resistance during the Holocaust as well as Holocaust survivor adjustments after the war. The book is beautifully written, insightful,honest and very informative. It also tells the story from the perspective of a woman and is a nice complement to the work of Nechama Tec.Sonia Orbuch and her co-author are to be congratulated.Once you start reading this book it is hard to put it down.It certainly is one of the best memoirs on Jewish resistance I have read.The study of the Holocaust provides a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of life under extreme duress. Sonia Orbuch has opened a window to an aspect of that history that has not been adequately treated to date.I thank her for the life she has lead and how she has chronicled that life in this wonderful,literate and, ultimately, hopeful book.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distinctive and Distinguished, May 17, 2009

By 

Rachel Brodie (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Here, There Are No Sarahs (Paperback)

There is much to recommend this book. What distinguishes this book from other memoirs of Holocaust survivors? In my experience with this genre, this book is unique in two ways, both of which are hinted at in the book's subtitle: "A Woman's Courageous Fight Against the Nazis and Her Bittersweet Fulfillment of the American Dream." The stories of the Jewish partisans--groups who banded together to fight the Nazis through guerilla warfare--are not as well known as they should be and Sonia's participation in those efforts as described in the book are a significant contribution to that cause. The second half of the book is devoted to her life after the war and includes her description of becoming a caretaker to her husband, who developed Parkinson's at a very early age. What I found particularly striking and astonishingly courageous is her assertion that, in many ways, that role was more difficult than all that she had endured in the Holocaust. Only a Holocaust survivor could say such a thing--the validation that such a sentiment provides for people who are caretakers to the chronically ill is, in my estimation, one of the most profound gifts to emerge from this testimonial.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Tale, Full of Life, May 14, 2009

By 

David R. Knepler (Woodacre, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Here, There Are No Sarahs (Paperback)

Written for Gan HaLev newsletter, the Jewish Congregation of San Geronimo Valley, Marin County, California:

Marin resident Sonia Shainwald Orbuch has just published her memoirs of her struggles as a Partisan resistance fighter during the Holocaust, and her subsequent successes and challenges in chasing the American dream. The book is called "Here, There Are No Sarahs," a reference to when she and her family joined a Russian partisan brigade in Nazi-occupied Ukraine in the spring of 1943. She was 18, and given the non-Jewish Russian name Sonia. Her life as Sarah, a Jewish teenager on the run from her home in Luboml, Poland, had officially changed forever.

Sonia Shainwald grew up in a loving family in a Jewish shtetl in Luboml. Her father, Wolf, was successful in the lumber industry, her mother, Beila, a doting homemaker and mother to Sonia and her two older brothers, Shneyer and Meir. Somewhat well-to-do, their fortunes changed financially during the Depression. Their lives changed forever September 1, 1939, when 14 year old Sonia witnessed the Nazis bomb Luboml. By the end of the war 99% of the town's 7000 Jews would be murdered.

Like Anne Frank, and also Larry Orbach in "Soaring Underground, A Young Fugitive's Life in Nazi Berlin", "Here, There Are No Sarahs" details coming of age in a world gone mad. Teenage years in 21st Century Marin County are spent attending school, going to the beach, dating, participating in athletics, and discovering who they are. For Frank, Orbach, and Sonia Orbuch, the teenage years were nightmares where family disappeared, home was destroyed, and every decision was made knowing that if you made the wrong choice, it could be your last action. Young Sonia saw her neighbors and family members slaughtered, made breathtaking escapes with her parents against impossible odds, and survived by her wits and those of her fellow partisans all before she turned 20.

"Here, There Are No Sarahs" details in plain, direct language, making for a very accessible read, another take on the daily heroism of European Jews and their sympathetic neighbors (often strangers) during World War II. It's an important addition to the emerging awareness of the Jews who fought back.

It also frankly discusses life after the Holocaust, as Sonia meets her husband-to-be, Isaak Orbuch, in a Displacement Camp. The second half of the book explores Sonia's life in America, raising her two children in New York, where their newly emerging success suffers another setback as her 45 year old husband is diagnosed with debilitating Parkinson's. But the Shainwald-Orbuch family has battled too long to ever become a victim, and Sonia's tenacious persistence carries her through.

Sonia now speaks publicly on her Holocaust experience, discusses fondly the lives of her children and granddaughter, and takes daily pride in knowing that that the miracle of Jewish life in America is permanent proof of our collective victory over the Nazis.