As the Second World War and the Nazi assault on Europe ended, some 25,000 Jews, entire families in some instances, walked out of the forests of Eastern Europe. For three years, these men, women, and children had miraculously survived—eluding Nazi hunts and Soviet, Polish, and Ukrainian partisans who often killed first and asked questions later. They had escaped from the Nazi ghettos and slave labor
camps and formed secret partisan camps in the surrounding forests. The forest not only protected them, it also became their base for sabotage and resistance efforts against the Germans and their allies.

Based on extensive research and numerous interviews with the survivors themselves, Fugitives of the Forest tells the harrowing and heroic story of those who resisted amid such perilous conditions. Some may ask the troubling question: why did not more Jews resist? But the question author-historian Allan Levine poses in this riveting, award-winning book is more apt: how, under the circumstances, was any resistance possible at all? Among the stories in these pages that answer this question:

• The remarkable story of Tuvia Bielski and his rescue of more than 1,200 Jews from a certain death—

   the subject of the major motion picture Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber

• The tragic resistance struggle of Dr. Yeheskel Atlas, who formed a partisan band to avenge his

   murdered family

• The bravery and resourcefulness of “Uncle Misha” Gildenman, whose partisans included the brave

   twelve-year-old Mordechai “Motele” Shlayan

• The tale of the Vilna ghetto