THE AVENGERS

A Jewish War Story

 

By

 

Rich Cohen

 

Alfred A. Knopf

New York

 

Hardcover, ISBN 0-375-40546-1

258 pages, $25.00

 

 

The Avengers is not the usual story that comes to mind about the Jews in World War II. This is not about men, women, and children who quietly went to their deaths. This is about the Jews who resisted, who fought back, and who, after the war, made their way to Israel to fight for a Jewish state. It is, primarily, the story of three remarkable Jews one man and two women who for a time shared the same bed.

There is Ruzka Korczak, less than five feet tall, with burning eyes, who as a child refused to sit in a classroom with a teacher who made a Jewish slur. There is Vitka Kempner, taller and willowy, unafraid to state she is a Jew in a time when they were rounded up for death camps. Along with others, Ruzka and Vitna find themselves trapped in the ghetto in Vilna, Lithuania, where they meet Abba Kovner, a charismatic leader of the Young Guard, a Zionist group with dreams of a homeland in Palestine. In contrast with others in the ghetto, Abba sees the design of the German plan to exterminate the Jews and he preaches that it is better to die in self-defense than to go to the slaughter like sheep. But the Jews running the ghetto see cooperation as the way out. They believe that if some Jews are given up to the Germans, then others will be saved, and for a while this seems true, as a German officer with a conscience assists Jews in escaping, until he is caught and shot. But what finally comes of this delaying tactic is that soon there are few left. When the Germans come for the last of them, the Young Guard escapes through the sewers to the swamps of the forest where they join other partisans to fight the Germans, although even there they are second-class citizens.

As partisans, they participate in raids on the Germans, blowing up bridges and trains, stealing guns and ammunition. But with the end of the war comes no safety, no shelter, and Abba believes that peace would not be peace for the Jews due to the deeply ingrained racism throughout Europe. There is also the desire for revenge, by which they devise a plan to poison bread made for Nazi officers held in a prison camp by Americans. It is this toughness of spirit that brings them together in Palestine, and when the surrounding Arab countries attack after the United Nations votes to partition Palestine, giving part of it to the Jews, it is one more fight for survival, a fight that continues today. As Ruzka said when Abba died as an old man, He gave me a reason to live.

 

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