cover image The Defiant: A True Story

The Defiant: A True Story

Shalom Yoran. St. Martin's Press, $24.95 (293pp) ISBN 978-0-312-14585-9

Yoran, a founding member of New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage, spent his teenage years fighting alongside Soviet partisans in the forests of eastern Europe in WWII. His compelling Holocaust story begins in 1939, when he and his family fled their home in Poland, which was under German occupation. Yoran, his brother Musio and his parents lived safely in the Soviet-occupied eastern part of the country until 1941, when the Germans invaded that area as well and his parents were killed. In gripping prose, Yoran details how the brothers and several friends built a bunker in the woods, where they survived the first winter. They later joined various partisan groups and participated in blowing up German supply and communication lines. There are haunting accounts of the virulent anti-Semitism that Yoran encountered even among the partisans, as well as descriptions of the extraordinary courage displayed by Jewish resistance fighters. Photos. (Sept.)