100 Books Like The Bielski Brothers

Mr. Lowe’s meticulous research of post-WWII Europe gives startling insight into how devastated the continent was after the war.

He paints a picture of lawlessness and depravity, arguably as bad as battle conditions had been. In some cases, it might have been worse. Revenge killings, rapes, and starvation were among the horrors. It begs the question, when did WWII really end? 

Bloodlands is a story about the dead. Using archives made available after the break-up of the Soviet Union, Mr. Snyder sheds light on both Stalin’s and Hitler’s brutality.

In a confined area that includes just eastern Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries, 14 million civilians died from the 1930s to the end of the war. Most were either starved or shot. Even more startling were the plans to kill millions more.

Stalin said, “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.” Mr. Snyder reminds us of the tragedy.

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.

This touching memoir by Barbara Armonas tells the story of her choice to stay in Lithuania during WWII for the sake of her infant son.

It speaks to the toll Mrs. Armonas paid for that decision, including what it took to raise her son in a labor camp. It also looks at the rest of her family who had fled to the US and their efforts to bring her home. Despite the difficulties and trauma, the story ends with an uplifting message of hope and joy for the future.

At its best, this is a tale of love, persistence, perseverance, and forgiveness.

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.

I have chosen this book despite the author being a somewhat obscure academic, a professor of history at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and the publisher, a somewhat little-known publisher (University Press of Kansas), because it gives a different picture of the Jewish resistance.

The other books are from the point of view of Jews and by mostly Jewish authors. This book is written by a Ukrainian-American and gives a fresh insight from the Ukrainian and Soviet perspectives. Writing about World War II is akin to interpreting Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which tells the tale of murder and rape from several perspectives.

World War II history is also like Rashomon; each country will tell its history from a different perspective. It is refreshing to hear from a Ukrainian point of view when most of my books are written from a Jewish perspective. 

Mr. Wyman details the ways in which FDR’s government and the State Department purposely ignored the plight of the Jews during WWII. Wyman meticulously researched work tells the sad but true story of how the anti-semitism of high-level decision-makers in the United States government allowed the genocide of European Jewry to continue unabated.

This is the beautifully written, spellbinding retelling of a remarkable moment in history where true humanity triumphed. A small protestant town in Southern France, in full view of the Vichy government managed to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death. Phillip Hallie has masterfully captured the personalities of the major rescuers and provides a detailed account of the events that led to this most unusual story of rescue. Photographs help to capture the excitement of this incredible, riveting story.