Light One Candle: A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem

This well-crafted, affecting memoir offers a detailed account of the author's struggle to survive the German occupation of Lithuania amid the terrorizing, torture and liquidation of most of the inhabitants of the Kaunas ghetto during WWII. Ganor describes the diabolical way the Nazis turned gentile Lithuanians against Jews and, inside the ghetto itself, neighbor against neighbor. Remaining useful to the Germans was the only way to survive, and Ganor recounts how the Jewish Council set up vocational classes to teach carpentry and other skills. In the end, Ganor was unable to avoid being sent to Dachau concentration camp, from which he was liberated at the eleventh hour by American troops. In postwar years he became a self-described ``emotional amputee'' who worked hard to suppress his bitter memories of the war. Yet in 1992, he experienced an almost miraculous second liberation when he met Clarence Matsumuru, a veteran of the Japanese American unit that liberated Dachau--and the very man who rescued Ganor from the brink of extinction on May 2, 1945. This absorbing memoir, with its record of suffering and catharsis, is a valuable addition to Holocaust literature. (Nov.)