A Jew in the Woods

About this book

"A rare, if not singular, Holocaust-era artifact... It offers the chance to enrich a little-explored topic of World War II history, one often left out of the broader canon of Holocaust narratives: the Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and fled to the woods of Eastern Europe." --Rebecca Frankel, author of Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love Of the 35,000 Lithuanian Jews trapped by the Germans in the Kovno Ghetto, most did not survive. Berl Kagan, a 34-year-old journalist and political activist, was among the few who escaped the ghetto before it was liquidated. Yet this bid for freedom was only the first step in a protracted quest to cheat almost-certain death. With his wife and sister-in-law, Kagan spent nine months in the forest, facing near-starvation, freezing temperatures, and the ever-present threat of capture and murder. The Red Army was advancing--but how many miracles would it take to see the day of liberation? Over the course of those dark, intrepid months, Kagan somehow kept a journal, recording his day-to-day life with unflinching lucidity and eloquence. The experience of Jews who fled to the woods of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust is little documented--but here we have an electrifying, real-time account of, in the author's words, "one long, horror-filled drama." Both riveting and ashimmer with moral beauty and hope, A Jew in the Woods is an astonishing testament to the resilience of the human spirit.