'Our Partisan Kingdom' and 'Written in a Barn': Holocaust survival up close and personal - review

The article reviews two memoirs, "Our Partisan Kingdom" by Lazar Engles and "Written in a Barn" by Ruth Leimenzon Engles, published by Yad Vashem. These personal accounts offer a vital counterpoint to the overwhelming statistic of six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

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the inescapable fact that these were six million individual lives that were viciously decimated and cut short, and after the victims were subjected to all manner of unspeakable horrors.

Author Barry Davis emphasizes the importance of individual stories in preserving the memory of victims and the lessons of this dark period. He highlights the immense suffering endured by survivors and their remarkable resilience in rebuilding their lives after the war, despite bearing indelible scars.

The review underscores the profound difficulty of comprehending the constant terror and deprivation experienced in ghettos and the sheer willpower required to survive years in hiding or as part of partisan groups. The memoirs of Lazar Engles and Ruth Leimenzon Engles, who both lost nearly all their close relatives, provide a deeply personal and emotive glimpse into this struggle.

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accounts of the lives of individual Jews in Europe during the Holocaust – including those who survived against seemingly impossible odds – are all the more precious and invaluable to perpetuating the memories of the victims and keeping the lessons to be learned from that ignominious chapter of human history uppermost in our minds.

Davis notes that the memoirs convey the Engles' survival of the "ineffable inferno" of the Holocaust and their subsequent efforts to rehabilitate their lives and start a family. This perspective challenges the tendency to reduce the Holocaust to mere statistics, bringing the human cost into sharp focus.

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How can you grasp the courage, determination, and sheer willpower it took to live through two or three or more years hiding from the Nazis in forests, as members of partisan groups or completely isolated from other Jews, trying desperately to keep body and soul together by any means available?