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Until Our Last Breath |
Book Reviews
"At Leizer Bart's funeral, one of the mourners came up to his son Michael to tell him that the gravestone should include a reference to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah, to honor his late father's involvement in the Jewish resistance movement in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), at the end of World War II. Michael had never heard of the Freedom Fighters. Following his father's death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten year reserach project to find out more details about his parents' time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents' story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider theme of world history. Zenia, Bart's mother, was born an raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner--known as the Avengers--which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna. Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author's family."
St. Martin's Press
New York City
"A chance remark at his father's funeral led Michael Bart, the son of two partisan fighters from the famed Nekamah Group [The Avengers] to piece together his parent's story before it was too late.
The result is a narrative of great but controlled power that tells the story of his parents, of the struggles within the Vilna Ghetto and of life in the ghetto's underground resistance and of life in the woods. The meticulously researched account is vivid and gives one a sense
of that extraordinary times and the most difficult of circumstances in which a few brave Jews understood their plight and decided that while they could not determine whether they lived or died; they would live with dignity and fight the Germans Until Their Last Breath. It
is a son's homage to his mother and father, to the cause for which they offered their life, to their enormous courage and their singular love. Very well done indeed."
Michael Berenbaum
Professor of Jewish Studies
American Jewish University
Director, Sigi Ziering Institute
Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust
Former President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
Former Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Director of its Research Institute
"Michael Bart's portrayal of his parent's marriage and survival in the Vilna Ghetto and of their lives as partisan fighters is a meaningful memorial to a great Jewish community as well as a tribute to the power of human endurance."
Harry I. Freund
Board member of the Jewish Book Council and the National Jewish Outreach Program
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Until Our Last Breath |
"In this carefully nuanced and beautifully written biography of Leizer Bart and his wife Zenia Lewinson Bart, the author provides us with keen new insights into the moral dilemmas faced
by Jewish resistance members both within the Vilna Ghetto (1941-1943) and later in the Rudnicki Forest (1943-1944). One important theme that runs throughout this work is the role that membership
in a prewar Zionist Youth movement such as the Hashomer Hatzair played in shaping the moral and political values of the 120 men and women who eventually fought as Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner."
Carl J. Rheins, Ph.D.
Executive Director
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
New York City
"Bart sets the personal story of his parents' involvement in the Lithuanian anti-Nazi resistance against a broad historical backdrop.
Leizer and Zenia Bart rarely discussed their years in the Vilna ghetto or in the Rudnicki forest with a group of Jewish partisans; it was only after Leizer died in 1996 that their son began serious research into their story. (Zenia's memory was failing, an early sign of Alzheimer's disease, which lead to her death in 2003.) With coauthor Corona (English and Humanities/San Diego City Coll.), Bart has crafted a text that is evocative but never mawkish. Much of the book has an intimate tone, yet the authors also provide scholarly material on key players in the Lithuanian and Nazi regimes that enables readers to place the couple's experiences in context. Close relatives of both Barts had been injured and/or killed by the Nazis, and they themselves were beaten. The descriptions of those incidents and the conditions that Jews faced in the early '40s make up the bulk of the narrative. It takes some time to get to the book's high point--the resistance--but it's there that it becomes much more exciting. Leizer and Zenia felt a moral obligation to join the partisans, though they knew they risked their lives. Even the path that led them to the Freedom Fighters of Nekamah was fraught with peril: "The stench of ammonia and sulfur slammed into their nostrils as they reached the bottom of the ladder. They had to feel for the opening to the narrow, ten foot long tunnel leading to the main collector pipe, then tuck their heads and shoulders in and begin to crawl." The Barts and their comrades were involved in an array of violent activities, including teaming with Soviet troops to destroy a village whose residents had collaborated with Nazis.
Appeals equally to the head and the heart--should be of interest to both academic and general readers."
Kirkus Book Review
New York City
"...Leizer and Zenia, Lithuanian Holocaust survivors, had fought in the Resistance. With his mother suffering from Alzheimer's, Bart cobbles together their story, which he and coauthor Corona, a professor of English and humanities at San Diego City College, relate along with the larger story of the Vilna ghetto. Leizer and Zenia's romance is unusually poignant against the background of the privations of the ghetto; the old social distinctions between Zenia's upper-class Lithuanian family and Leizer's poor Polish origins were brushed aside within the ghetto's confines. The young couple fled the ghetto in its waning days to fight in a part of the Resistance known as the Avengers. The group is best known for its controversial postwar activities, which the Barts declined to participate in, partly out of concern for Zenia's health. This is a powerful tale of the triumph of love under extremely difficult conditions."
Publishers Weekly
Reviewed 03-10-2008
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