reviews - Jewish Book Council

REVIEWS
radio documentary on the history of the opera
“Brundibar” when she was invited to join the
survivors of Room 28’s annual reunion in
Prague. She then embarked on a ten year journey,
meeting, interviewing, befriending, and
being accepted by the survivors. She spent years
in research, weaving the stories of those adolescents
around her central character, Helga Pollak,
thus memorializing all the girls who did not survive.
The girls formed a close group, influenced
by the brilliant and caring counselors who guided
them and introduced the concept of ma’agal
(circle), a court system that encouraged the girls
to be caring and considerate. Brenner observes
that thanks to all the intellectuals and talented
people gathered in one ghetto, and because they
decided that these children would be educated
and prepared for their “futures” by whoever had
not been deported, the children became better
educated than Christian children, whose education
was perverted by Nazi dogma. With Brenner’s
book, the reader becomes one with those
girls, sharing their uncertainties but also, from
time to time, their pleasures. MWP
HERE, THERE
ARE NO SARAH’S:
A WOMAN’S
COURAGEOUS
FIGHT AGAINST
THE NAZIS AND
HER BITTERSWEET
FULFILLMENT OF THE
AMERICAN DREAM
Sonia Shainwald Orbuch And Fred Rosenbaum
RDR Books, 2009. 240 pp. $16.95 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1571431301 (pbk.)
The success of the film “Defiance,” the story
of the Bielskis, who saved the lives of 1,200
Jews in the forests of Belorussia, has ignited an
interest about Jews who fought back. Critics have
lamented the fact that the ranks of Jews who
fought as partisans were few; they fear that the
popularity of the film mitigates the real tragedy,
that most Jews did not escape the murderous
intentions of the Nazis to rid the world of Jews.
Nevertheless, Jews did fight as partisans and
the Bielskis were not the exception. This book is
the story of Sonia Shainwald Orbuch, who
escaped the roundup of Jews in Luboml, Poland,
in the province of Volhynia, now part of
Ukraine, between the two world wars. Alongside
Luboml’s Jewish population were poor, uneducated
Ukrainian peasants as well as a Polish
minority. The town in the 1930’s had roughly
7,000 people, about 4,000 of them Jews who
worked mostly as artisans and merchants, and
34 Jewish Book World Spring 5770/2010
Autobiography and Memoir
the center of Jewish life was Luboml’s Great Synagogue.
All of that is gone today as the Nazis,
with help from some in the local population,
devastated the Jewish community.
Sonia and her father survived because they
were able to escape in time, thanks to the heroic
efforts of a Ukrainian neighbor who guided
them to the nearby forest region where they were
able to join a Soviet partisan band. Not all partisan
Otriads who fought the Nazis welcomed
Jews who tried to join them. The Polish and
Ukrainian partisan groups, for example, were,
for the most part, anti-Semitic and hated Jews as
mush as they did the Nazis. Once part of the
Soviet band, Sonia, whose given name was
Sarah, was told that “Here, there are no Sarah’s,
you will be called Sonia.” The author recalls that
“I couldn’t object and wasn’t even sure I wanted
to. I already felt like a changed person, and the
new Russian name fit my new life.”
Of particular interest is Sonia’s description
of what life was like for women in her partisan
unit. There was much sexual harassment and
even rape and, as she explains, “for that reason
single females did tend to pick a defender, often
a brawny laborer, the sort of person with whom
they would likely not have had contact before
the war. Not infrequently a refined middle class
Jewish girl would end up with an uneducated,
hard drinking Slav.” She goes on to write that
sex was commonplace, often followed by
unwanted pregnancies and venereal disease.
During the war, Sonia eventually lost three
brothers, her mother , and two men she loved,
but survived the war along with her father. She
married a Jewish survivor, whom she frankly
admits was not someone to whom she was readily
attracted. Nevertheless, the marriage endured,
and they found themselves in a displacement
camp following the war, where they made
money in the black market, and eventually emigrated
to the U.S. This is a riveting book and a
welcome addition to our understanding of how
Jews who joined partisans band—at least those
that welcomed Jews—survived the war. JF
HOUND DOG: THE
LEIBER AND STOLLER
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, with David Ritz
Simon & Schuster, 2009. 322 pp. $25.00
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5938-2
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were not only
two of the most creative songwriters of the
20th century, but also vital figures—along
with fellow American Jews such as Benny
Goodman, Jerry Wexler, and the Chess
brothers—in the integration of American
music and popular culture. Today, they are
figures of nostalgia, perhaps known best as
the songwriters whose music makes up the
musical “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” Back in the
1950’s and early 1960’s, however, their writing
not only catapulted Elvis Presley to
worldwide fame, but also helped performers
such as Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton, The
Coasters, and The Drifters make their mark
with colorful and entertaining songs that
crossed color lines, sometimes in rather daring
fashion. “Kansas City,” “Stand by Me,”
“Hound Dog,” and “Jailhouse Rock” are
some of the most recognizable American
songs ever.
This dual autobiography essentially has
Leiber and Stoller trading verses, alternating
as they share the stories of their lives. This is
an effective technique when they are telling
the same story—as in their anecdotes about
Presley and his over-the-top manager Colonel
Parker—but a bit confusing when they are
discussing different topics. Moreover, once
they get past their heyday, the narrative goes
a bit flat, becoming more on the order of
standard celebrity fare. The book’s certainly
not a bad one, but it will not have the place
in my life that their best songs do. Appendices,
index. DC
I CHOOSE LIFE:
TWO LINKED
STORIES OF
HOLOCAUST
SURVIVAL AND
REBIRTH
Jerry L. Jennings and Sol and Goldie Finkelstein,
with Joseph S. Finkelstein
Xlibris, 2009. 142 pp. $29.99
ISBN: 978-1-4415-0306-0
With this book the reader gets three stories
in one—two “befores” and one
“after.” First, a Sol story, and then a Goldie
story, but once married, their story is a single
narrative. Both maintained unusual courage
and conviction that they would survive.
Goldie was very pretty and remarkably selfassured.
When an SS guard gave her parents a
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