Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

Taking Risks: Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

The night the SS rounded up the Jews of his ghetto, 18-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest soon to be engulfed by winter. There he joined a band of pro-Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis and saved hundreds of civilians. After the war, he smuggled contraband from one end of Europe to the other. Then, without money or a formal education and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco. Within a decade, Yosef—now known as Joe Pell—was on his way to becoming one of Northern California’s leading real estate developers.

Joseph Pell grew up in Poland and fought in a partisan unit in Nax\zi-occupied Ukraine. After immigrating to San Francisco he co-founded two ice cream stores and founded Pell Development, a major real estate company.

Fred Rosenbaum is the founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, the largest school for adult Jewish education in Northern Claifornia. He has taught at several Bay Area universities and is the author of three books on modern Jewish history.