The fur­ther we get from the Holo­caust, the more the mem­oirs increase. It seems to be an imper­a­tive of descen­dants to keep mem­o­ries of their fam­i­ly con­stant, to not relin­quish these loved and once vibrant peo­ple nor allow the tri­als they expe­ri­enced to dis­ap­pear into the mias­ma. Some mem­oirs exist, there­fore, main­ly to pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity for future gen­er­a­tions or to fur­nish proof of the Shoah. Oth­ers, beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, read like fine fic­tion; a few offer insights that are applic­a­ble to the larg­er pop­u­la­tion, uncov­er­ing a new phe­nom­e­non as a result of the writer’s inves­ti­ga­tion; still oth­ers are intend­ed to teach as well as to remember…”in sun­shine and in shad­ow.”

This lat­est addi­tion to The Library of Holo­caust Tes­ti­monies attests to the inge­nu­ity, dar­ing, and courage of the Pol­ish Jews who escaped to Rus­sia dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Poland; they sur­vived the Holo­caust but endured unbe­liev­ably hor­ri­ble phys­i­cal and men­tal tor­ture in Stalin’s USSR. Then upon their return to Poland, they were sub­ject­ed to hate and dan­ger from the Poles, and were still under a Com­mu­nist regime. This mem­oir is dis­tinc­tive, how­ev­er, for the extra­or­di­nary per­son­al­i­ty of Hen­ry Sko­rr. He is charis­mat­ic and coura­geous. He main­tained his moral val­ues even when it threat­ened his life to do so, learned how to nego­ti­ate and even thrive in what­ev­er ambi­ence he found him­self, and most of all — nev­er desert­ed his fam­i­ly. They came first in all his plot­ting, plan­ning and achiev­ing. The book ends with the fam­i­ly reach­ing Israel after emi­grat­ing from Poland.