Under the Yellow & Red Stars

Under the Yellow & Red Stars is a remarkable story of survival, coming of age and homecoming after years as a stranger in a strange land. Alex Levin was only ten years old when he ran deep into the forest after the Germans invaded his hometown of Rokitno and only twelve when he emerged from hiding to find that he had neither parents nor a community to return to. A harrowing tale of escape, endurance and exceptional emotional resilience, Levin's story also draws us into his later life as an officer and eventual outcast in the USSR, and as an immigrant who successfully builds a new life in Canada. This poetically written memoir is imbued with loss and pain, but also with the optimistic spirit of a boy determined to survive.

Alex Levin was born in 1932 in the shtetl of Rokitno, Poland, not far from the Soviet border. In 1944, after the region was liberated by the Red Army, Alex Levin was sent to the USSR as a war orphan and enrolled in military cadet school. He became a professional engineer in the Soviet army until he was forced out for being a Jew. He married his wife in 1957 and their daughter was born in 1961. Alex decided to build a new life for himself and his family in Canada in 1975, where he worked first as an engineer and then as a successful builder. He continues to live in Toronto and speaks tirelessly to students about his experiences in the Holocaust.