Boy with a Violin: A Story of Survival

Description

On June 22, 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union began. In a matter of days, the war reached the suburbs of Kaunas, Lithuania, where a young Jewish violinist, Yochanan Fein, led a happy childhood. On June 22, 1941, that childhood ended. In Boy with a Violin, Fein recounts his early life under Nazi occupation―his survival in the Kaunas Ghetto, the separation from his parents, his narrow escapes from death at the hands of Nazi officers, the harrowing stories of those he knew who did not survive, and the abhorrent conditions he endured while in hiding. He tells the tale of his rescuer, Jonas Paulavičius, the Lithuanian carpenter who sought to save the Jewish spirit. Paulavičius rescued those he believed could rebuild in the wake of the Holocaust, hiding engineers and doctors in his underground Noah's Ark. Among the sixteen he saved stood one fourteen-year-old violinist. Following liberation, Fein describes the aftermath of the war as survivors returned to what was left of their homes and attempted to piece together the fragmented remains of their lives. He recounts the difficulties of returning to some semblance of normal life in the midst of a complex political climate, culminating in his daring escape from Soviet Lithuania. In one of the darkest eras of human history, there were those who proved that the goodness of the human spirit survives against all odds. Boy with a Violin pays tribute to those who risked everything to save a life, and whose altruism crossed the boundaries of race and religion. In this first English translation of Boy with a Violin, Fein continues to offer his testimony to the strength of the human spirit. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Part I 1. Who Was This Man 2. A Jewish Boy and His Parents 3. The Goal—Saving the Intellectuals 4. The Violin of My Life 5. The Story—Back to the Beginning 6. The Great Action and the Looting of Those Who Remained 7. The Separation from My Parents 8. At My Relatives’ House 9. General Winter 10. Activities 11. The Malina 12. The Girl, Ghetta’leh 13. The Murder of Children 14. My Escape from the Ghetto 15. In the Attic and the “Tomato Patch 16. In the Depths of the Pit 17. Farewell from a Distance 18. The Russian Captive and Rubin, the Jew 19. About Anna, Oscar, and Otto 20. The Sixteen Survivors 21. About Hideouts and People 22. The Paulaviciuses Part II 23. There Is No Law and There Is No Judge 24. Gražina 25. The Return Home 26. The Joy of Youth 27. Moscow 28. A Brief Return Home Part III 29. Goodbye, Lithuania 30. Strangers in Poland 31. At the Children’s Home 32. My Students—My Friends 33. The Court 34. Solitude 35. Goodbye, Poland 36. Me and My Past Epilogue Notes About the Author