One impor­tant cat­e­go­ry of Holo­caust-themed lit­er­a­ture is the sto­ry of Jew­ish resis­tance. Joshua Greene’s account of Celia Cimmer’s escape from the Nazis and sub­se­quent role in a band of par­ti­sans offers one such ver­sion of Jew­ish defi­ance. Using a hybrid for­mat of fac­tu­al mate­r­i­al, invent­ed dia­logue, and inte­ri­or mono­logue, Greene crafts a com­pelling nar­ra­tive while con­vey­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion. He explains in his author’s note that the book is based on inter­views and oth­er tes­ti­mo­ny, and that he did alter some minor or ambigu­ous details. Sep­a­rate chap­ters, alter­nat­ing with Celia’s sto­ry, present his­tor­i­cal mate­ri­als, and cor­rect mis­con­cep­tions about the era. The book is a care­ful­ly bal­anced work, struc­tured to engage the reader’s atten­tion and con­front dif­fi­cult truths.

Noth­ing in Celia Cimmer’s young life indi­cat­ed how she would respond when the Nazis invad­ed Poland. Through­out the book, Greene repeat­ed­ly denies facile expla­na­tions of hero­ism, unbri­dled hope, or fate as expla­na­tions for her sur­vival. Like many Jews in Europe, she Celia is stunned to learn how quick­ly her non-Jew­ish neigh­bors turn against the Jews who have shared their land for cen­turies. When the Nazis force Pol­ish Jews into ghet­toes, their pre­vi­ous lives seem unrec­og­niz­ably dis­tant, as they are sub­ject­ed to star­va­tion, dis­ease, and vio­lence. Celia has sev­er­al sib­lings; her younger sis­ter, Sla­va, plays a key role in the book. Celia nev­er ide­al­izes her mother’s ded­i­ca­tion, con­strained by the impos­si­ble con­di­tions imposed on her, but the des­per­ate choic­es she made are embed­ded in Celia’s consciousness.

The infor­ma­tion­al chap­ters begin with the assump­tion that read­ers may lack a base of knowl­edge about the Holo­caust. Greene briefly explains the caus­es of Euro­pean anti­semitism, the cru­cial, if lim­it­ed, role played by Jew­ish par­ti­sans, and the dis­tinc­tions among dif­fer­ent kinds of intern­ment and labor camps, as well as killing cen­ters. A chap­ter on resis­tance points out that, in addi­tion to armed strug­gle, Jews used oth­er meth­ods to fight back. These chap­ters do not func­tion as digres­sions; they are placed strate­gi­cal­ly to offer ongo­ing con­text as Celia’s sto­ry unfolds.

Celia’s con­sum­ing task of sur­vival leaves her ​“numb.” She feels betrayed by her Jew­ish edu­ca­tion; it seemed that ​“God had dis­ap­point­ed her.” After the war and her emi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States, her psy­cho­log­i­cal state of dis­lo­ca­tion lingers, affect­ing her rela­tion­ships and her sense of pur­pose. Although Celia’s expe­ri­ence as a fight­er against Nazi ter­ror demon­strates tremen­dous strength, it is clear that the wounds she suf­fers are far from tran­sient. In this con­text, Greene’s com­mit­ment to bear wit­ness to Celia, and to Shoah’s oth­er vic­tims and sur­vivors, takes on a deep­er urgency.