Rather Die Fighting

Frank Blaichman was sixteen when, in September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, starting World War II. A native of Kamionka--population 2,500, of whom one quarter were Jews--Frank was the oldest of seven children. For centuries, gentiles and Jews had lived in relative harmony, but the arrival of the Nazis changed all that as, first, gratuitous beatings, then roundups and killings began. Frank vowed he would never surrender voluntarily. The night before the Jews were loaded onto trucks and taken to death camps, he said good-bye to his family and escaped into the nearby forest. There, after acquiring weapons, he and a band of other Jews formed an underground fighting force, and soon Blaichman became platoon commander of a unique, all-Jewish partisan unit.

 In the words of Martin Gilbert, "The greater portion of his gripping memoir is the story of his two years in the forest. Told with meticulous detail and powerful emotion, it deserves to become a classic account of Jewish resistance."