Moshe Gilden­man, a renowned musi­cian and city engi­neer, was con­script­ed into forced labor when the Nazis invad­ed his town of Korets in July 1941. The fac­to­ry and quar­ry work was gru­el­ing and the work­ers were starved and beat­en. But because they were capa­ble of hard labor, they were exempt­ed from being loaded into the dushegub­ka (Russ­ian for ​“soul killer”), a mobile gas cham­ber, or from being dri­ven to the out­skirts of town to dig their own graves. His wife Gol­da and thir­teen-year-old daugh­ter Feigala were not so lucky. They were among the more than two thou­sand Jews who were exe­cut­ed in Korets. When Gildenman’s nephew was ordered by the Ger­mans to sort through the cloth­ing the vic­tims left behind, he found Gol­da and Feigala’s coats. From that moment on, all Gilden­man want­ed was revenge. 

Gilden­man and his son Sim­cha decid­ed to escape and join the par­ti­sans. A for­mer choir leader, Gilden­man wrote a song, ​“Come to the For­est,” hop­ing that many would join him, although only a few did. Gilden­man was armed with only one revolver and a knife, but he car­ried his Yid­dish song book. Undaunt­ed, they planned to meet up with guer­ril­las from the Sovi­et Red Army who were orga­niz­ing par­ti­san units in Ger­man occu­pied territory. 

Moshe’s unit only had six­teen men and four women, but with bril­liant strate­gic plans they were able to fool the ene­my into believ­ing that they were many more. They ambushed Ger­man patrols and stole their weapons. They iden­ti­fied Ukraini­ans that were col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Nazis, raid­ed those vil­lages and took stores of food, med­i­cine, and ammu­ni­tion. They sab­o­taged tele­phone lines and rail­road tracks, and blew up bridges and tar­get­ed mil­i­tary gar­risons, killing hun­dreds of Nazi sol­diers. Their coura­geous deeds became leg­endary, and Gilden­man took on the name of Uncle Misha. Soon oth­ers, most seek­ing revenge for the mur­der of their fam­i­lies, sought out Uncle Misha’s Jew­ish Group.

The book is an excit­ing read not only because of the white-knuck­le exploits, but also because of Grymes’ col­or­ful and com­pas­sion­ate descrip­tions of the wide vari­ety of peo­ple who pop­u­lat­ed the for­est guer­ril­la groups. There were sol­diers from the Red Army, Jew­ish refugees, Ukrain­ian and Pol­ish peas­ants who refused to become col­lab­o­ra­tors. By 1943, it was esti­mat­ed there were thir­ty thou­sand par­ti­sans in Ukraine.

Uncle Misha took in one lit­tle boy whom he found in the for­est, tat­tered and alone. The boy was clutch­ing a vio­lin, which endeared him to the for­mer Korets children’s choir leader. He said his name was Mit­ka and that he had escaped from his vil­lage after his par­ents and sis­ter had been shot in retal­i­a­tion for burn­ing a Ger­man grain store­house. He was des­per­ate to join the par­ti­sans. After hear­ing his beau­ti­ful play­ing on the vio­lin, Uncle Misha and Mit­ka devised a plan for Mit­ka to per­form dur­ing din­ners at a can­teen for Ger­man offi­cers. The drunk­en sol­diers did not real­ize that the young vio­lin­ist had plant­ed a pow­er­ful bomb in the base­ment. The explo­sion was so loud the par­ti­sans could hear it across the river. 

The only draw­back to this excel­lent his­to­ry is its lack of an index. Grymes intro­duces each chap­ter with a verse from Uncle Misha’s book of Free­dom Songs, under­scor­ing the sur­pris­ing role that music played in the dan­ger­ous, bold actions of Uncle Misha and the Jew­ish Group.