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Isaac's Army: The Jewish Resistance In Occupied Poland (2012)

by Matthew Brzezinski(Favorite Author)

4.14 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0553807277 (ISBN13: 9780553807271)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Random House

review 1: I can't remember ever reading a sadder book. After returning from a trip to Poland, prompted by the realization that I know next to nothing about Polish history, particularly as it relates to the plight of the Jews during WW2, I began a search for a non-fiction account and stumbled across this book.With great clarity Brzezinski recounts the story of the Warsaw Jewish Resistance movement through the eyes of half a dozen young activists, young men and women who, against all odds, survive Hitler's campaign to obliterate the entire Jewish population along with just about the entirety of the city of Warsaw. The story is truly wrenching. As are the tales of the few Jews who do manage to actually leave the country during the war. And then there are the young children who are hidd... moreen away in Gentile homes and Catholic convents, scrambling to learn by heart the Catechism, so they can appear non-Jewish. Reading the book I was amazed at the youth of the resistance leaders, but the mystery of this is explained by Mark Edelman, one of the central Jewish activists :" To join the Resistance, one had to leave one's family behind to face starvation, disease, and the roundups. It took less courage to pick up a gun than to stay with one's children and comfort them in the face of almost certain death. It was not a coincidence, he explained,that Resistance fighters were almost all young and unmarried. In fact one of the bravest scenes Edelman witnessed during the war was the sight of a man entering the Umschlagplatz (train station) with his son on his shoulders. The boy was frightened and asking where they were going. "Not far", the father reassured him. "Soon it will be over.'"Just amazing.
review 2: Best Holocaust book I've ever read, probably because it is not a first-person account. It doesn't suffer the claustrophobia of a perspective, sweeping instead across demographics and geographics.This is a researched documentary about Jewish resistance and survival in Warsaw. Sadly, this rich and detailed account only covers Warsaw. The author hints to knowledge about a smaller armed rebellion in Lithuania that helped seed the one in Warsaw, but doesn't provide details. He does that too often, eg: relating strong details about a skirmish in the street and then finishing by saying the battle lasted a week and covered the entire neighborhood. Sadly, the book had to be liftable, so the author had to be selective about content. If you've ever wanted solid historical facts about the Warsaw uprising or life in Warsaw before and after, this is the book to read. less

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