Barbara Leslie Epstein

This is an excellent work of scholarship on a neglected topic. Little has been written about the Holocaust in Belarus, and even less is available in English. Yet in many ways, the Holocaust in Belarus is unique: unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, the general population of Belarus was on the whole very sympathetic of and helpful towards the Jews. The author attempts to answer the question as to why this was, and to tell the fascinating story of the Minsk Ghetto and the resistance movement show more within. She does very well on both counts.

The Minsk Ghetto leaked like a sieve, with people constantly going in and out: by the time it was liquidated, 10,000 of its residents had escaped and joined partisan groups in the forest, and when you considered that only about 1/4th to 1/3rd of escapees made it to the partians, that means many more escaped the ghetto, and the population wasn't terribly large to begin with. That detail alone has a story behind it -- and there were many other fascinating facts and figures and tales to tell. I found the book absorbing and engaging in addition to being well-researched. I would love to read more of this author's work. show less