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When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry Hardcover – September 23, 2010

by Gal Beckerman (Author)

39 customer reviews

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A New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorites

“Beckerman recounts the historic trajectory of this grand assertion of human rights with passionate clarity and pellucid conviction.”—Cynthia Ozick

AT THE END OF WORLD WAR II, NEARLY THREE MILLION JEWS WERE TRAPPED INSIDE THE SOVIET UNION. They lived a paradox—unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue. Drawing on newly released Soviet government documents and hundreds of interviews, Beckerman shows how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989 and forced human rights into the center of American foreign policy. In cinematic detail, this multigenerational saga, filled with suspense and revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.

“Fresh, surprising and exceedingly well-researched.”—Anne Applebaum, Washington Post Best Nonfiction 2010

“A riveting work of reporting and a magisterial history of one of the twentieth century’s great dramas of liberation.”—Commentary

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (September 23, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618573097
ISBN-13: 978-0618573097
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #664 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > History
- #895 in Books > History > Middle East > Israel & Palestine
- #906 in Books > History > World > Religious > Judaism

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful

flat out fantastic

By Likes to eat Pi on October 2, 2010

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

This is a work of incredible depth, great scholarship, and fantastic writing. I usually try not to gush over a book when writing a review because I figure that the reader would usually rather know more about the book and less about what I thought about it, but this one is an exception - I simply loved every page of it. I've read plenty of history books, but I can't remember ever reading one in the past that I would have described as a page turner until now. The cast of characters in this book is truly diverse - radical rabbis, activists, middle class housewives, US presidents, Russian dissidents, KGB officers, and Israeli secret agents. It is a testament to Beckerman's skill's as a writer that he can weave a cohesive and compelling narrative through them all, giving them depth and their actions meaning.

The book goes back and forth between the USSR and the rest of the world (mostly the USA), showing the Jewish movements within the USSR and the activities occurring on the outside, all set against the backdrop of the cold war. Mixed in with the story of the soviet Jews are also several larger stories that are revealed, including the role of human rights in foreign relations, Jewsish-American guilt over not doing more during the holocaust, and the Jewish community's ability to become a political force. All of these are themes still playing out today, and this book shows where many of them got their start.

Lastly the depth of scholarship in this book is impressive. A quick look through the sources at the end of the book reveals that Beckerman interviewed countless people for first hand knowledge of the events in the book. It seems that almost everyone he wrote about he talked to personally.Read more ›

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

How quickly we forget the suffering of Soviet Jews

By LawyerMom on October 21, 2010

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

This book tells an amazing story, and it tells it really well.

Like the author, my husband and brother-in-law both had seats reserved at their bar mitzvah celebrations for Jewish boys in the Soviet Union who shared their birthdays but could not have their own celebrations. This was, however, decades ago. The Soviet Union has been history for almost 20 years, and the vast number of Russians in Israel has long since become a fact of life taken more or less for granted. Natan Sharansky's daughters are both married and he may even be a grandfather by now. The Jewish Left has long since fragmented and moved on to multiple different causes.

People forget, however, that once upon a time, Anatoly Scharansky spent nine years in Soviet prisons, almost no Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union, and non-Orthodox Jews in America (and some Orthodox Jews as well), having looked for something to unite them after the civil rights movement fizzled, found their unity, almost an obsession, with liberating Soviet refuseniks. People forget that Yosef Begun was once sentenced to 12 years of hard labor solely for teaching Hebrew. People forget that one small but determined group of Soviet Jews were so desperate to get out, they even tried to hijack a plane from the Baltics, a story Beckerman tells with particular flair.Read more ›

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

The Waiting Game

By RCM VINE VOICE on August 5, 2010

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

Gal Beckerman's book "When They Come for Us We'll be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry" reads like a piece of forgotten history. After the end of WWII, a communist Soviet Union did everything it could to oppress its Jewish population, most importantly by not allowing them to emigrate. While other human rights violations persisted, much of the outside world was unaware of what was happening and Soviet leadership could deny that there was any problem. "When They Come for Us We'll be Gone" is an account of what it took for the world at large to recognize the plight of Soviet Jewry as they struggled for over three decades to gain their freedom from a country that didn't want them but wouldn't let them go.

Beckerman begins with how he first gained interest in this piece of history, recalling the Soviet "twin" he was given as he celebrated his bar mitzvah to act as a symbolic celebration for a Soviet Jew who was denied this rite of passage. With the horrors of the Holocaust ever present in Jewish minds, the cry to "Never forget" didn't seem to apply to the Jews who were languishing in the Soviet Union. Beckerman traces a large amount of history, starting in 1963 and ending in 1991, of how the Soviet Jews worked to gain their freedom from inside the Soviet Union and how American Jews slowly joined the fight from the outside. Beckerman focuses his chapters on a few key players within the movement, encompassing dissidents who were jailed for essentially being Jewish, ranging to American politicians who had to walk a fine line during the Cold War to help these lost people while not escalating any animosity between the two nations.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Captivating non-fiction

This book was recommended to me by the daughter of refuseniks and I am happy to have read it. It is meticulously researched and extremely well written. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Michael C

Understanding a Movement

Excellent well researched book with many interesting anecdotes. As someone who has met some of the former refusnicks, it was especially interesting. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Irwin Weiss, MD

Utterly Compelling

An incredibly insightful and compelling narrative that beautifully interleaves the activism in three countries to free Soviet Jews. Read more

Published 6 months ago by A. Eisenberg

Gripping and relevant

One hair-rasing page follows another in this superb account about saving the Soviet Jews from Stalin all the way up the line of succession. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Daniel G. Madigan

A must-have resource on Soviet Jewry

This should be required reading for all who study the worst times of USSR treatment of Jews. This is an impressive, detailed, and gripping book.

Published 18 months ago by Jean P. Purcell

I loved it

As a person, who was on the Soviet side of this epic struggle, I am very impressed by a deep and honest research of the facts, and the matching presentation.

Published 19 months ago by Hana

Best book on the Refusenik era

I have read most of the books about the Refusenik era and find this to be the best. Great insights into the thinking of those directlly involved. Read more

Published 21 months ago by Lawrence I. Lerner

An important book

This book relates the international struggle to save Soviet Jewry in copious detail and very impressively relates this struggle to the Helsinki accords and general human rights... Read more

Published on July 18, 2013 by David G. Ebin

Fascinating and Moving - and Relevant

While this is a history book, the events it describes are fairly recent and parts of it will be familiar to most readers. Read more

Published on April 22, 2013 by Amazon Customer

Excellent

This true accounting of the Soviet Jewish situation during the '60s and '70s is really worth reading. It's very well written and accurate. Read more

Published on March 19, 2013 by Experienced Shopper