When Miriam Dworetsky and Morris Rabinowitz married in 1933 they made their home in Zhetel, a town with an 80% Jewish population, leaving behind Miriam's extended family in Novogrudek. Miriam ran a successful pharmacy and they had two daughters, but German propaganda among the Poles was relentlessly antisemitic so that when the Russians invaded in 1939 it was almost a relief that Communist propaganda took over. Their home was commandeered and they were given shelter in a barn by local farmers, but the German counter-invasion of 1941 as part of Operation Barbarossa spelt the end for the Jews of Zhetel. In October the SS set up their headquarters in the cinema and all Jews were lined up together with their possessions. Valuables were often hidden in their homes, some of which were recovered after the war by those few who survived. On 8 December the Dworetskys who had remained in Novogrudek perished in the first of the city's massacres. As the Jews of Zhetel huddled in the ghetto and typhus raged through the unhygienic conditions, news arrived that a group of partisans were active in the nearby forest led by Alter Dvoretsky, the Zhetel lawyer who had been appointed their leader in the ghetto. The scene shifts at this point to Philip Lazowski, an 11-year-old who also lived in the Zhetel ghetto, and we begin to follow his story in parallel as his fate is later inextricably entwined with that of Miriam Dworetsky and the Rabinowitz family. As the Jews were lined up to be selected for death or labour, Philip asked Miriam to pass him off as her son and save him. The Rabinowitz family created a double bunker in their garage, one a fake to deceive the SS officers and another real one below it. Finally they make it into Bialowieza Forest to join the partisans, suffering unimaginable hardship. Years later in America, Philip and Miriam meet, we learn how Philip lost his mother and family, and Philip marries Miriam's daughter. 335pp, photos.
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