Between Darkness & Dawn: A Saga of the Hehalutz

Soviet Jews anxious to flee Lenin's Bolshevik ""paradise'' for a safe haven in Palestine faced British immigration quotas. Some Zionist leaders, impatient with Britain's promises and lies, formed a ``Zionist underground railway.'' T'homi was instrumental in the clandestine operation and illuminates this chapter in Jewish history in a vivid, if plainly written, memoir. The story takes us from his boyhood in a Crimean town through anguished years of Bolshevik repression of Jews, famine, his father's death, arrests, to his ultimate escape via Poland to Haifa. The Bolsheviks, who branded Jewish nationalism as reactionary, drove Jewish cultural and religious groups underground. T'homi, who later became a commander in the Haganah, relies heavily on reconstructed dialogue in his firsthand account of his adventures. The first installment in a three-part autobiography, this chronicle details the logistics of an underground exodus to Palestine. (June 16