Here, There Are No Sarahs: A Woman's Courageous Fight Against the Nazis and Her Bittersweet Fulfillment of the American Dream

by Sonia Shainwald Orbuch, Fred Rosenbaum

Stripped of her name, 18-year-old "Sonia" Shainwald went to war without basic training, without equipment, without food or any of the essentials necessary to fight the Germans. Urging her family and neighbors to leave a wretched hiding place during the liquidation of their ghetto, she and her parents and uncle spent a brutal winter in the forests and then joined a heroic Soviet partisan brigade. After the liberation, her family spent three years in a Displaced Persons camp near Frankfurt, and eventually reached America. But Sonia's life in her adopted land has been both tragic and triumphant.“Here, There Are No Sarahs” is co-authored by Holocaust scholar Fred Rosenbaum whose “Taking Risks” (with former partisan Joseph Pell) was praised by the San Francisco Chronical as “so extraordinary that it transcends the genre.” As they were completing their manuscript, Orbuch and Rosenbaum discovered that a trove of touching family correspondence written in the 1930s and 40s lay in a closet in Argentina. The letters, some in Sonia's own hand, were copied, sent to the Bay Area, and translated. Several are published in the book's appendix, along with love poetry penned in the forest in 1943.

Genres: Holocaust, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Polish Literature, War

258 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2009

Reviews

[Gilda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoir of a Jewish girl from a small town in Poland, starting in her teenage years, who was forced to flee into the forest with her family to escape the Nazis and anti-Semitic Ukranians during a brutal winter. She tells the story of their survival that eventually leads them to join Soviet partisans in fighting back against the Nazis. Compelling story of the devastation of her family and the Jewish community, and her post-war experience in Europe as a displaced person, eventual immigration to the US, and building a new life with difficulty and challenges.