100 Books Like Stalin's Guerrillas

When people hear that I'm a child of Holocaust survivors, they ask what concentration camp or ghetto I or my parents were in. When I tell them that they were partisans, fighting the Nazis in the forest with guns, they don't believe me. They think Jews went to their deaths like sheep to slaughter passively. But Jews fought back like my parents did in the Kruk-Max otryad, Soviet fighting force. 

Peter Duffy's book is an easy read, not an academic tome. I hope people will read about the heroism of Jews fighting back against fascism and evil.

This is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jewish involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Penslar is a professor of Jewish history and Zionism at Harvard University and a colleague of mine there.

We are both proud and progressive Zionists, yet critical of certain policies when we have to be. It’s a densely written book; one needs to read it slowly and carefully. Very few Jews are pacifists; the image of the Jew as the shy, bookish scholar or tailor (stereotyped by the images of popular culture like Fiddler on the Roof) is wrong and misleading.

If Jews did not want to fight in certain wars, it was for self-preservation or due to anti-Semitism—they were not allowed to be farmers, own land, hunt, fish, use a gun, even join the army, or were… show more.

Ainsztein’s book heavily influenced me but also honored my parents’ otryad, the Kruk-Max Group, by describing their fighting force (pp. 353-360). He should be more well-known, and his book should be reprinted in paperback to make it more available to a wider audience.

While his opening chapter is a historical survey of the Jews as fighters and soldiers in the Diaspora, most of the book details the rise of partisans and soldiers in the Polish and Soviet armed forces during the Holocaust 1941-1944.

It is extensive and comprehensive, at nearly 980 pages. But that should not deter the reader, especially the lover of military history—Ainsztein writes beautifully. Like Penslar, he addresses the myth of Jewish pacifism and reluctance to fight militarily. 

This is the book, first published in 1967, that got me interested in Jewish resistance. Yuri was a gamin-looking man with delightful eyes and personality. He was also a novelist, poet, biographer, and friend, but being a Communist limited his influence and impact in America except in progressive Jewish circles.

His book is a first-hand account of resistance during the Shoah in the forests, camps, ghettos, and military in all areas of Europe—Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Italy. It was highly praised by both Elie Wiesel—“Read Yuri Suhl's book and you will never again ask why they went to the slaughter like sheep” and Saul Bellow—“A profoundly stirring book”.

It’s a short, only 300-page, easy-to-read book with excellent translations and a good introduction to the subject. I highly recommend the reader to start with this book.

This riveting novel brings us into the lives of Russian snipers during the WW II siege of Stalingrad.

We live in a basement, learn something of extreme patience, and get a sense of how people barely remain sane in pressure-cooker situations. What struck me most were the women. One was a sniper with extreme convictions. Others were there for the pleasure of the men. But the best part of the novel was the cat-and-mouse game between opposing snipers. 

Not only did I learn something about warfare, but I couldn’t put the book down.

Professor Theo J. Schulte has written a well-documented, well researched study of the Ostheer (German Army in the East) covering the Russian campaign.

I loved this book because, like almost all of the recommendations that I have listed, it is a single volume with a concise yet thorough enough study of the German Army and its connection to the Genocide and Democide in the Soviet Union.

The book taught me that there was a reason why, during the war, out of the approximately twenty-five million Soviet citizens who died in the war, thirteen million were civilians. The reason, Schulte points to, is the purposeful targeting of the civilian population for murder (Democide).

The book made me realize that the study of Nazi policies in the East should not only include the Holocaust, but should also cover the “other” deaths that occurred as well.

This is the first of Stahel's four volumes on Operation Barbarossa, the Germans’ June 1941 invasion that started the Nazi-Soviet War. These are books I wish I had written!

They are graduate-level military history and meticulously referenced. A key contribution is bringing the culmination point of Barbarossa, and indeed the entire conflict, even earlier than others had previously (the culmination point is basically where momentum shifts). Australian Stahel pays particular attention to German commanders.

I love how Tolsma sets up a very believable story of a Dutch war widow who ends up harboring a wounded Resistance worker. Although saving him means risking everything and although liberation is within sight, Cornelia’s faith won’t allow her to turn the man out. Fearing their story will end before it even begins, she must make an impossible choice between relative safety for her brother and herself, or joining Gerrit in the Resistance. I learned so much about what the Dutch went through during WWII.

I just recently read this wonderful debut novel, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since! Courage, My Love tells the story of two women living in Nazi-occupied Rome who become involved in the Italian resistance and its effort to rid their country of fascism. This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, timely novel of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, and the courage they have in standing up to evil.

This novel (historical fiction but inspired by real people and events) was released just a month before my novel. I read it immediately and was enthralled by the intensity and density of issues. Two best friends, Norwegian teen boys, choose opposite paths after the Nazi invasion of their homeland. One reveled in the potential glory and power of joining a German Youth club while the other pursued resistance and resilience in protesting the propaganda and power of the military occupation. The escalation of emotions and dangers, actual conflicts, high-stakes tension, and eventual climactic decisions are riveting. This has everything: emotional depth, action, suspicion, suspense, and complex characters in challenging situations. Add the Author Note with details about the truth behind the tale and you’ve got a guaranteed winner of a book.