Customer Reviews

Here, There Are No Sarahs

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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.

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.

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.

My eyes were opened and I was deeply moved as I read the intimate account of a young child forced to leave everything familiar to her and courageously flee from those who wanted to kill her and her family.

"Here, There There Are No Sarah's" lays out vividly the experiences of a child and her family hiding for days in closets, living for months in the brutal winter forest, receiving kind help from strangers along the way and ultimately joining the Russian Partisans to fight for her life.

The second part of the book describes Ms. Orbuch rebuilding a new life of normalcy with family and friends, while also having to live over and over the memories of this unfathomable experience of loss and grief that happened to her, her family and millions of other human beings.

The book ends with a beautiful account of Ms. Orbuch's young grand daughter speaking to an audience about growing up with the stories of her grandma's surviving the Nazi Holocaust. This young 17 year old girl speaks about keeping the promise of "never again" and that "we must speak out against any injustice or discrimination that we see in the world". Towards the end of her talk, Eva says that "I know that as I head off to college, I have have the daunting task of fighting for justice... I say "wow!", that is the ultimate victory!

I recommend this moving account to anyone who is interested in the human condition and the interplay of good and evil in the world.

Excellent read. Shows a side of WWII that is not well known. It was all new to me and fascinating.

This book was well written and a good read. It gives you another viewpoint of the Holocaust. Easy to read story. Subject goes into the Jewish partisans which is another viewpoint, and I highly recommend it.