"To Live And Fight Another Day" by Bracha Weisbarth is a good suggestion
for your holocaust book search.
Here the review from AJL
“To Live And Fight Another Day” is a book that you will not want to put
down – it is easy to read, keeps your interest throughout, is
heartwarming and honest. This semi-autobiography (the main character is
fashioned after the author's brother) is about a band of mostly Jewish
partisans as they participate in dangerous missions to sabotage the
Nazis in the Ukraine. They blow up railroads, defend victims of Nazi
terror, avenge brutality, all the time knowing that unknown informers
would be rewarded with a kilo of salt and two kilos of sugar for turning
them in. They survive through terrible winters in forests and eventually
join Russian partisan forces. Not only is this well written for junior
high through adult, it is on a topic rarely published. An essential
purchase. ... AJL Newsletter
Available from Amazon.com, Baker and Taylor, Ingram, Barnes and Noble.
ISBN-13: 978-9657344279
Here is the review from Book Talk
BOOK TALK
Bracha Weisbarth, a survivor and Director of Library Services at the
Waldor Memorial Library in New Jersey, has written a fine novel based on
her family's experiences during the Holocaust. It is dedicated to her
brother, Benny, who led their family out of the ghetto before a Nazi
"Final Aktion" and later, into the forests, where their father and his
brothers, experienced foresters, had been working in a slave labor camp.
After leaving his surviving family in a Displaced Persons Camp, Benny,
the story's narrator, reflects on his past while imprisoned in a British
camp in Cyprus after being captured by British soldiers as he and other
survivors try to enter Palestine illegally. Benny, thirteen years old,
and his two sisters, little Sheindale and Nina, his older sister, and
their parents belong to a highly respected, financially secure family in
their village of Malinsk in the southwest corner of the Ukraine in an
area known as Volyn. Occupying two large houses, the family owned a
factory for spinning wool, a flour mill, a farm and parcels of land in
the forest. Three generations of the family had been born in this
shtetl. They had dealt fairly and honestly with all. Fortunately,
Benny's tall, strong charismatic father and his brothers had done favors
for several Ukrainian peasants, even giving them some of their cows
during the Russian occupation so that the family would not be accused of
capitalism. A few peasants had become real friends.
The Nazis who have occupied the town after the Russians retreat force
the Jews to a nearby town, Berezne, where a Jewish ghetto has been
organized. When a former employee of Benny's father who, being of German
descent, has been appointed by the Germans to manage their woolen
factory, visits them with food and milk, he warns them to go to the
forest and hide because the Nazis are planning something terrible for
the ghetto the following day. Despite Benny's entreaty, the family
refuses to leave until Benny grabs the hand of little Sheindale and
tells his mother and sister that he is taking her to hide with Fedor, a
Ukrainian friend in a neighboring village. This causes his mother to don
a peasant style babushka and his older sister, Dina, to follow him out
of the ghetto, but not his grandparents or young aunts who stay and will
perish the following day. The frightened, grieving family hide in
Fedor's hayloft for several days until Benny, disguised as a peasant
boy, and Fedor's son drive a wagon to Fedor's nephew's home in the
forest. There they meet Benny's father who, having heard of the
massacre, is also at the nephew's home. He grieves for his family in a
dramatically touching scene. Then Benny arrives. They decide that the
family must move deep into the forest in order to survive, but first
Benny volunteers to go to their Ukrainian friends to get supplies for
the long perilous sojourn.
From here on, the story becomes one of adventure and ingenuity - first
for survival and then for revenge. Luckily, Benny's father and his
brothers know the forest intimately, and the Germans don't, but the
Jewish family has to out-improvise Robinson Crusoe in order to survive
once winter comes. Due to his small size, blond Ukrainian looks, great
intelligence and daring, Benny becomes the scout, a role that becomes
more perilous as the story progresses and the family morphs into
partisans. After meeting other Jewish refugees in the forest and later,
organized Russian partisans, they actively fight the Nazis. Adventure
continues postwar, as well. This story has everything: pathos,
Yiddishkeit, ingenuity, adventure, tragedy, tenderness and a young boy
hero with whom readers will identify as they "enter" the story. Written
in the first person, it is a finely honed portrayal of Jewish survival
and partisan activity based on the author's experience. Was she Sheindale?
Also available in the Kindle edition
NEW- The Hebrew edition is now available - translation follows the
English edition, translated by Yael Penkower.
ISBN-13: 978-9657344415 Also available from the same distributors
NOTE- The author, Bracha Weisbarth is a survivor and former Director of
Library Services at the Waldor Memorial Library in New Jersey.
Today she lives in Rananna Israel and makes frequent talks about her book.
Chaim Mazo
chaim.m...@gmail.com
__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
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