In the avengers there are citizens who fight the Germans and blow up their trains. They try to save the lives of many people.
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In 1944, a band of Jewish guerillas rose up out of Vilna, Lithuania and the Baltic forests to sabotage the German army and assist the counterattacking Russians. They were led by a young poet, Abba Kovner, and among their principal commandos were two teenaged girls who lived with him, Vitka Kempner and Ruzka Korczak. Their work -- bombing trains and bridges, escaping through sewers, planning revenge on Germans after the war, smuggling refugees to Palestine, and participating in the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel -- is fast, compelling, and would make an awesome movie. It shows the story of the Holocaust isn't all Jews quietly going to the slaughter; some fought back ... and triumphed. There are heroes and villains of every stripe along the way, from Jewish policemen who turned others in to the Nazis, to the Benedictine Mother Superior who hid Jews in her nunnery, smuggled grenades into the ghetto, and told them, "In this situation, a Jew is the only decent thing to be." The author, a writer for the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, is a nephew of one of the women in this unlikely and amazing triumvirate. If I hadn't started this book in the evening and had to go to bed at 1 a.m., I would have read it pretty much in one sitting.
The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus
