With wars escalating around us, World War II literature seems more — not less — relevant. A Jew In the Woods is the slim diary of a thirty-four-year-old Lithuanian journalist and politically active Zionist who escaped from the Kovno Ghetto with his wife and her sister in 1943. Written in Yiddish and published in 1955, it is now available for the first time in English, published by White Goat Press, an imprint of the Yiddish Book Center.
Aided by an aging non-Jewish Lithuanian couple, farmers, Beryl Kagan and his family miraculously survived nine harrowing months in their barn and, eventually, in the forest, surrounded by both Nazis and the Red Army, expecting to die at any moment. That they did not is only one of many miracles that transpired. Isaac Bashevis Singer, reviewing the book in The Forward, wrote, “A Jew in the Woods is a tiny book, but the whole Jewish and human tragedy is there in these pages.”
It’s easy to slip into Kagan’s journey. His is a modern voice. “We have traveled from the twentieth century back to the Dark Ages.” In a brief prologue, he writes, “I have edited these notes as little as possible.… so that … the hot breath of the actual experience would remain.” And that is what is so remarkable about this text. We are there, with him and his small group of escapees as they move between the house, the stable, and the woods — holding our breath, listening for the snap of a twig that will betray them to a curious neighbor or worse.
Even within the little group of escapees there are villains, particularly a wealthy couple who feast while those around them are starving. “In the face of death, character differences become sharper. The result is an oppressive tension.” At the same time, Kagan surprises himself by becoming more devoted to his faith. “The emotional world of a believer is richer than the emotional world of a nonbeliever.”
The diary begins in October. In February, they are forced to flee into the woods. There they remain until August, when the war ends in their part of the world. How they construct hiding places and sleep standing up, how they endure frosts and lack of food, are the most difficult parts of the book to read. At the same time, news of the horrors unfolding in the ghetto seep into their little world, confirming their decision to escape. (Almost everyone in the ghetto, with 335,000 Lithuanian Jews, was murdered.) As Kagan sadly notes, “The Jews in the ghetto were one large, hypnotized mass.”
Even the author, rereading his diary upon its publication twelve years later, can “hardly believe they are pages of ‘my’ life.” To this twenty-first-century reader, it feels like a cautionary tale.
There is an excellent introduction by Rebecca Frankel and, movingly, an afterward by a daughter of Beryl Kagan. In addition, the book includes photographs that help the reader visualize Kagan, his family, and his rescuer.
Eleanor Foa is an author, journalist, and corporate writer. Her memoir MIXED MESSAGES: Reflections on an Italian Jewish Family and Exile was published in November 2019. Her work appears in national newspapers, magazines and websites. She is the author of Whither Thou Goest and In Good Company, President of Eleanor Foa Associates (eleanorfoa.com), past president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and received literary residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
