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Available
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Publication
Knopf (2000), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 256 pages
Description
'Gripping and even inspiring' Sunday Times When they were not yet twenty years old three young Jews left their families in Western Poland and came to the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna. Abba, leader of the young people in the ghetto and Rushka and Vitka were his deputies. Together they organised the first underground movement in Europe, mapping the sewers and using the tunnels beneath the city to smuggle food and weapons into and out of the ghetto. In 1943 they escaped the ghetto and led their band of resistance fighters deep into the forests of Poland, where they lived for the remainder of the war. From here, they bombed the occupied city they loved. When the war was over Abba, Vitka and Rushka went to Israel, but they did not forget what they had learned in Vilna and in the forest.… (more)
Media reviews
Cohens Buch reflektiert die Schwierigkeiten des Überlebenskampfes in einem friedlosen Jahrhundert; es thematisiert auch die Schuld, in die sich diejenigen verstrickten, die "nicht wie Lämmer zur Schlachtbank" geführt werden wollten. Die "wahre Geschichte von Liebe und Vergeltung" verzichtet
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nicht auf ein gewisses Pathos. Allerdings legt das Lied der Partisanen auch die Wurzeln aus Gewalt, Tragik und Hoffnung frei, aus denen Israel entstanden ist. Show Less
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User reviews
LibraryThing member carioca
This book was a fun read! Rich Cohen takes a "fighter" approach to it and relays the story of Abba Kovner, the leader of Jewish resistance in the Vilna ghetto. In this book, there is no room for self-pity, ruminations and "why" questions; Cohen writes in a quick pace and makes it all sound more
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like a novel than a biography. Show Less
LibraryThing member harrietbrown
Excellent book about a little talked-about subject: Jewish partisans fighting in Europe during WW II. Their bravery is astonishing. History disguised as an edge-of-your-seat thriller.
LibraryThing member claudiachernov
Easy to read! I found the last few chapters especially fascinating. No footnotes or sources are supplied, though, and I wished for comparisons to other accounts of partisan life.
LibraryThing member rivkat
Cohen tells the story of three Jewish partisans who went from the Vilna ghetto to the forests, where they killed Nazis and sympathetic peasants, and then to Palestine/Israel. Also they were apparently a threesome, though this is never all that explicit. It’s a story of horrific losses, of
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persistence and bitter determination, and survival when fighting back was brutally dangerous. Reading about the successive purges of the Vilna ghetto was very hard, especially given the collaboration of some Jews who thought that by showing the Nazis that Jews could be useful some would survive. It’s an amazing story, but not a nice one. (Things ebooks can’t do to you: my reading experience was marred by some helpful person who’d decided to correct the book whenever s/he disagreed with stylistic choices such as comma placement or casual use of “like” for “such as.” Would have been more tolerable if volunteer editor had known that “prised” is just as much a word as “pried” is, and equally appropriate, and that May 15, 1948 is a perfectly correct date to give for the invasion of Israel by the Arab armies. It got so that I was extremely sad when the correction of a German spelling was accurate. Wish I’d had an eraser as I went through.) Show Less
LibraryThing member lydiasbooks
Interesting. Obviously this topic is really difficult to read about, but worth it. The details of life - ongoing survival through the strongest, most horrible pressures of our recent history are fascinating as well as scary and sad. Although none of my ancestors were members of this particular
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group of partisans, my grandfather was in the French Resistance and some of my family members were killed by the Nazis. All my family of that generation were irrevocably scarred and had the course of their lives altered by the Second World War. I feel due to this that it is important for everyone to read such books and remember the atrocities committed in the past, to stop them happening again. This book is written in a fairly matter of fact style, which brings across the events. I'd definitely say that it needs to be read in small doses, but is great in the end. Recommended. Show Less
ISBN
0375405461 / 9780375405464