Reviews for The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz

The average rating for The diary of Dawid Rubinowicz based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-05 00:00:00 Julie Bartley The Defiant is the story of Shalom Yoran (born Selim Sznycer) , and his time spent with the partisans fighting the Nazis in Poland. After three years on the run , with his family , from Nazi mobile killing units , the Nazi terror finally caught up with them and in the little town of Kurzeniec , 1 040 Jewish men , women and children where dragged from their homes and hiding places , murdered and burned. Included among those slaughtered where Selim's parents. Selim and his brother escaped into the woods and joined the partisans , and heeded the last words of their mother to survive and take vengeance for them. This is the story of the partisan guerilla warfare against Nazi terror. Although Selim fought among non-Jews , he always fought first and foremost as a Jew - with them but not as one of them. He dreamed of having his own country , of fighting for it and even dying for it-that is what kept him alive. The dream of surviving and living in the Land of Israel as a free Jew and building it. After the war , his dream was fulfilled , and having escaped the Soviet Army that tried to draft him , and the British blockade that tried to keep Jews out of Palestine , he settled in Israel and joined the airforce , becoming a prominent businessman in Israel. The Zionists in Europe where always the backbone of Jewish resistance to Nazism.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-18 00:00:00 William J Kube This is the war memoir of a Polish Jew who was 14 at the time the Nazis invaded Poland. His story begins at that point and then describes 3 years of his family's flight to escape the clutches of the occupiers. The mobile death squads finally catch up to his family one fateful night in a small town in northeastern Poland. Both Yoran's parents are killed, along with over 1,000 other Jews. Yoran and his brother escape. The last words from their mother was that they needed to survive to bear witness and to also avenge the family. Yoran and his brother, Musi do just that. They escape to the forest and eventually join various partisan fighting groups, suffering hunger, cold and fatigue while participating in guerilla warfare against the Nazis. He, along with other Jewish partisans, were sometimes the object of rabid anti-semitism from their own comrades in arms as well. The last part of the story documents Yoran's journey after the German surrender through Europe to Palestine and the nascent Israeli state. Yoran says in the book's foreword how he wished that more Jews had resisted the Nazis. He felt that certainly more people would have survived. I think, though, that this man had an uncommon fierceness and will to survive--some of his exploits are truly amazing (and it's embarrassing when I compare him to my soft, earnest 17 year old self). Because of the matter of fact nature of the retelling there is an honest, un-embellished flavor to the narrative. This is a refreshing change to many written 'war stories.'