A great memoir

This was an interesting book because it doesn’t feel like a traditional memoir, it feels more like a recount of events. I don't think that's a bad thing, I think recalling your feelings and emotions and trying to put them on the paper for something like experiencing the Holocaust would be incredibly difficult and I think that just reading the recounts is the first step to educating ourselves.

I have read several Holocaust memoirs in the past, and I think what this most reminded me of is the stories of the Bielski brothers who were also Jewish partisans living in a similar area to the author.

I know there's been a lot of criticism of this book, that the author’s claims that members of the Polish armed forces and Polish civilians were antisemitic were false. I think these criticisms are self serving. Considering what were now know about antisemitism in Eastern Europe during the early 20th century, I think these observations were probably factual. Do I believe that all Poles were antisemitic? Of course not, and this is not a claim that the author makes. In fact, the author highlights some of the actions of Poles that risked their lives to help and hide Jewish people during the holocaust.

I remember thinking when I finish this book of my grandparents. My grandparents would be about 15 years younger than the author of this book, they never went to war, and they grew up in rural Victoria, Australia. For me, that just brought home how recent these events were. My grandparents are both in their 80s but they're still alive and my grandparents were alive when these things were happening. I then thick about the differences in the lives of the people the author described and the lives of my grandparents. My grandfather had a motorbike to ride, he had electricity, he had horses, he had food, he was comfortable. The author writes that almost no one in his village had electricity, some didn't have running water, some still had dirt floors; it's astounding how different these two places were and how into people living in the same generation had completely different lives.

I think more than anything that's why I connected so much with this book I've never really had that connection before where I had that personal association and I have no family from Europe I have no family that's ever been to war it open very lucky about that but I just had this personal connection to this book which made it all the more real for me.

It was very simply written, it was well told, very short and sharp. If you were interested in the holocaust or Jewish partisans I definitely recommend giving this want to go

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