Road
to Victory: Jewish Soldiers of the 16th Lithuanian Division is one of the few books written
about Eastern European
Jews who volunteered to fight as soldiers during World War
II. The
book contains first-person accounts about the participation of
Lithuanian Jews
who fought in the 16th Lithuanian Division of the Red Army. Through
their
accounts they represent the large corps of 4,500 Jewish fighters—men and women alike—who
took arms
in the battlefields of World War II in order to destroy the enemy as
well as to
liberate the remnants of Lithuanian Jewry—the survivors of
the Shoah. A good
number of stories are written by or about women who fought in the war.
Professor Dov Levin, himself a partisan and possibly the world
authority on the
Jews of Lithuania, wrote the first article in the book.
In
addition to the personal accounts, there is a yizkor (memorial) section
listing
1,215 soldiers who died, giving their name, father’s given
name, year of birth,
rank, date and place of death. All told some 2,500 people are
mentioned in the book. There is an index of persons (yizkor section
excluded).
The
book was originally compiled in Yiddish and then translated into
Hebrew.
Dorothy Leivers, author of The Jews of Kopcheve (Lithuania)
also published by
Avotaynu, has organized and edited this English language translation.
The cover
is a replica of the Hebrew version of the book with text adapted in
English.
This
is a readable history, rich in details both for historians and
genealogists.
7"
x 10" 376 pp. softcover $39.00
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