THE AVENGERS: A JEWISH WAR STORY by Rich Cohen

Rich Cohen, The Avengers:   A Jewish War Story (New York: Vintage Books of Random House), 2000.

Available in hard cover, paperback, Kindle and audiotape.

 Non-fiction

 Recommended by Dorinda Kauzlarich-Rupe

This is a World War II true and amazing story of three Jewish young people who, with great courage, actively resisted Nazi Germany.  Upon the liquidation of the ghetto in Vilna, Lithuania, the three escaped to the forest and teamed up with various partisan groups from Russia and Prussia in the fight. They displayed great strength, courage and creativity. The story follows them through the war and into Palestine, where they eventually settled. Cohen paints very colorful, soul grabbing pictures of the struggles these three encountered and sometimes created.

An especially poignant paragraph towards the end of the book, when the three were on a boat heading to Palestine is:  “In one photo, Vitka stands on deck, her hair tossed in the wind. Refugees stare out at the horizon. Vitka could tell a partisan from a survivor at twenty feet. The partisans were soldiers—giving orders, taking orders. The survivors were in some way crippled, sitting until told to move, moving until told to sit.”

The New York Times, in their review said of Cohen and his story,  “Fascinating….His language is spare and muscular, his descriptions evocative, his technique suspenseful.  He is moved by this story and he moves us.”

This is truly an excellent book based on good research. It gives unusual insight into the resistance to Hitler and the struggle for human rights. I highly recommend it.

DEFENDING BALTIMORE AGAINST ENEMY ATTACK by Charles Osgood

Charles Osgood, Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack: A Boyhood Year During World War II (New York: Hyperion, 2004).

Unabridged CD read by the author (Brilliance Audio, 2004).

Available for free on Audible at amazon.com.

 (Memoir)

Recommended by Wilda Morris

Charles Osgood stole a line from a famous novel to begin his memoir of one year during his childhood, the year 1942. “It was,” he says, “the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Though I’m not quite old enough to remember 1942 very well, the book evoked some of my childhood memories, among them ration books, playing “bombs over Tokyo” with cousins, and my Uncle Fred Webber going out to see that there were no lights on in the neighborhood when the air raid siren went off.

Charlie’s imagination led him to believe some of the things he did could help defeat the Germans—and sometimes got him into trouble. As he recounts the games and adventures in which he engaged, he is also telling us what it was like to attend a Catholic school in Baltimore in the 1940s and a lot about American culture of the time. He is somewhat nostalgic for outdoor children’s games; evenings with the family singing around the piano; and radio dramas, songs and movies that were popular during the war.

The book is a rich tapestry in which we find scrap drives, a young boy’s crush on a girl willing to listen as he tells her the plot lines of movies he has seen, what happened when he decides to “be” Zorro; the 1942 World Series, and victory gardens. Charlie didn’t like vegetables, so he was determined to grow peaches, pears, oranges and other fruits in the family’s small victory garden. He says, “At least I had stopped short of trying to produce Baltimore’s first banana tree” (p. 89). At Our Lady of Lourdes, however, he was assigned to argue against victory gardens in a debate.

You will have to read the book yourself to see what arguments Charlie came up with for that position, where he and his sister Mary Ann went when they ran away from home, how playing Zorro got him in trouble, and how he and his friend use a chemistry set to try to help win the war. It is all told with Osgood’s good sense of humor and timing. It is a short book, fun to read or to listen to. I highly recommend it.