The Fields of Ukraine: A 17-Year-Old's Survival of Nazi Occupation - Softcover

Haim Tal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0982230400 ISBN 13: 9780982230404

Publisher: Dallci Press, 2009

Synopsis

Yosef Laufer is just 17 years old when war breaks out in Eastern Europe in 1941. With his father, he barely escapes deportation to Belzec, a Nazi death camp, and for two long years they forge a precarious existence in the fields and woods outside of their village of Zurawno. Faced with the constant threat of discovery by both the occupying troops and the local townspeople, Yosef s gripping ordeal told in his own words becomes an amazing narrative of the intense will to survive and the power of the human spirit, where every single day of life outside of the camps stands as a victory against the Nazis. This true eyewitness story leaves an indelible impression long after the last page is read.

About this title

Review

The Fields of Ukraine shows movingly how a Jewish father and his teenage son survived the horrors of the Holocaust by relying on their mutual courage, sacrifice and love. This book deserves a wide readership. --Nechama Tec, Ph.D., Holocaust scholar and Professor Emerita at the University of Connecticut, author of eight books including Defiance, now a major motion picture.

After escaping a ghetto in Eastern Galicia, and avoiding deportation to a death camp, the teenager Yosef Laufer spent over a year in hiding with his father in the forest. They begged and pilfered potatoes and whatever else they could scrounge from the fields or from obliging and not-so-obliging Polish neighbors. They survived one winter in a hole in the ground, covered by a roof of forest materials, with stores of potatoes and sugar beets. Two Polish neighbors, and one in particular, showed great kindness over an extended period of time until the Nazis permanently retreated in the summer of `44. Laufer's story is harrowing and remarkable. It's a cliche to speak of a triumph of the human spirit; but that is exactly what it was. He goes into detail on how his father helped sustain them spiritually, observing Jewish holidays and traditions as best they could, and reinforcing their will to endure. Yosef Laufer went on to Palestine and to fight in the 1948 war for Israel's independence, serving under the command of Yitzhak Rabin. He became a baker, had a family, and passed away in February, 2009. The Fields of Ukraine is the English version of a book written by Haim Tal in Hebrew, originally published in Israel in 1993. Appropriately, Tal wrote the book in Laufer's narrative voice. (Sadly, Mr. Tal passed away just as this translation was coming out.) --Ralph Seliger, Editor and Writer

Edition details

• Publisher: Dallci Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0982230400
• ISBN 13: 9780982230404
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168