Shadows of Treblinka

the long version

Inspiring and compelling, this husband-and-wife memoir traces two very different paths through uncertainty and horror ... to survival. Saul was the son of a poor shoemaker, Miriam the daughter of a prosperous furrier. Both grew up in Siemiatcyze, a small town near what became, in 1939, the Russian-German border - only forty miles away from the Treblinka death camp. Both waged courageous and daring fights for life that stand as rare counterexamples to the widely held belief that Jews offered minimal resistance to their persecutors. At the same time their stories provide startling evidence of the prior knowledge Jews in the region surrounding Treblinka had of the genocide taking place there. Saul's riveting "Escape from Treblinka" is one of the few accounts ever published of escape from this camp. On the run and forced to seek help from strangers, he was constantly in danger of being discovered or betrayed. In "Long Days, Dark Nights," Miriam recounts her own harrowing tale: first hiding in an underground bunker and then, with her brother, searching the wild Polish countryside for their parents. Shadows of Treblinka draws the reader deep into the daily terrors and struggles of eluding capture and death at the hands of the Nazis. Ultimately, these separate tales of courage, faith, resourcefulness, and luck come together in a remarkable love story.