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ОглавлениеA JEWISH JOURNEY
SHELDON COHEN
Copyright 2012 Sheldon Cohen,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0744-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I appreciate the assistance given to me by Rabbi Howard Schwartz who read the book during its early evolution. All his help and constructive criticism not withstanding, any shortcomings that remain are my own responsibility.
This book is fiction based on actual events. The main characters are fictional.
I am a first generation American. In 1904, my mother, a three month old, came to the United States with her parents. All her life, she would claim to be born in Rochester, New York, her first residence in the New World. In her old age, when we had the celebration honoring Ellis Island she changed her story, bragging that she had passed through the famous Island as an infant. My father, aged four, also arrived in 1904.
As a youngster, I heard stories about how my grandfathers “fled the Czar.” They came from Tiktin, Poland, (Yiddish), Tykocin (Polish), an area under Russian dominance called the Pale of Settlement
As I grew up I heard other stories about my heritage, including one told to me by my maternal grandmother about how she, as a young child, witnessed pogroms including the beheading of a Jew by a sword wielding “Cossack” on horseback. From my step paternal grandmother I learned of her twelve brothers and sisters lost in the holocaust.
Later in life, I learned from my uncle’s daughter that my maternal grandfather deserted the Czar’s army rather then face the persecution of the Jewish soldier. Right before he was hoping to leave Russia-Poland and join his family in the United States, a compassionate Russian guard said, “Let the young man go. His family is already there.”
An interest in learning more about my heritage surfaced after I retired and had more time to reflect on such matters, so I studied the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and their struggle with anti-Semitism, Hitler, World War II, the anti-Nazi partisan resistance in Europe and the Holocaust. After much study, I put together a fictional account, based on actual events, of five generations of a German and a Jewish family that I hope will be informative and interesting to the reader.
Although the book has past relevance, in the present era of terrorism and rising anti-Semitism, it has current relevance as well. He who fails to learn the lessons of history is doomed to repeat it.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Amanda, Megan, Carly, Alexa, Ethan, Emily, Derek and the brave men and women willing to fight terrorism, whatever form it might take
