Book Description

Relates the biography of Rabbi Soloveitchik of Brisk (then in Poland), including the suffering of his community, his family, and other Jews under the Nazis and under the Soviets, whose threat to the souls of Jews, as part of their general militant atheism, was considered more serious than the Nazi threat to Jewish bodies. Ch. 9 (p. 351-391), "Surviving World War II", includes descriptions of efforts to carry on with Jewish religious life under German occupation in 1939. Soloveitchik fled to Warsaw and then to Vilna, under Soviet control. Ch. 10 (p. 392-476), "In Vilna, the 'Jerusalem of Lithuania'", depicts Jewish suffering under the alternating German and Soviet occupations, including a pogrom by Lithuanians. While Soloveitchik succeeded in fleeing from Soviet rule to Eretz Israel, his wife and three of his children remained in Brisk. Ch. 13 (p. 535-576), "The Fate of the Jews of Brisk", recounts the liquidation of the ghetto there, where Soloveitchik's dear ones apparently perished.