Rather Die Fighting: A Memoir of World War II - Softcover

Blaichman, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611450152 ISBN 13: 9781611450156

Publisher: Arcade, 2011

Synopsis

This is a harrowing, utterly moving memoir of a young Polish Jew who chose not to go quietly and defied the mighty Nazi war machine during World War II.

Frank Blaichman was sixteen years old when the war broke out. In 1942, the killings began in Poland. With his family and friends decimated by the roundups, Blaichman decided that he would rather die fighting; he set off for the forest to find the underground bunkers of Jews who had already escaped. Together they formed a partisan force dedicated to fighting the Germans. Table of Contents:

1. Days of Terror and a Decision to Escape
2. From Farmhouse to Forest
3. Finding Allies, Killing Collaborators
4. The Raid on Leszec Castle
5. Russian Airdrops and Sabotage Missions
6. Final Engagements and the German Retreat
7. Return to Poland

“IT IS AN HONOR TO WRITE a few words of introduction to this exceptional memoir. The Holocaust was on such a vast scale that no amount of published recollections by survivors could ever tell the complete story. Each memoir adds an important element: an aspect of the narrative, an account of survival, a testimony to human suffering and endurance. In this memoir, we learn a great deal about one of the neglected aspects of the Jewish experience during the Second World War: the acts of resistance carried out by those who found the means, and the will, to challenge the mighty German war machine and apparatus of destruction. Frank Blaichman commanded a Jewish partisan platoon. These seven words, so simple, and at the same time so unusual, mask a story of drama and danger, a story of which the Jewish people can be proud.”—Sir Martin Gilbert, from his Introduction

About this title

About the Authors

Frank Blaichman helped organize the establishment of the Jewish Fighters Monument at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He and his wife, Cesia, a fellow partisan, have two children and six grandchildren, and live in New York City.

Sir Martin Gilbert, the distinguished official biographer of Churchill, is a fellow at Merton College, Oxford. His impressive body of work includes Churchill: A Life, The Holocaust, and The Second World War: A Complete History. In 1995, he was knighted for services to British history and international relations, and in 2009, he was appointed to the British Government’s Iraq War Inquiry. He lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1611450152
• ISBN 13: 9781611450156
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224