A boy battling history�.With
the crack of a Nazi whip on his father's head a young boy's
world was gone forever. Eliezer "Lonek" Jaroslawicz
and his once prosperous Polish Jewish family joined the tide of
refugees fleeing east from the Nazi menace at the dawn of the
Second World War. In Escape via Siberia: A Child's Odyssey of
Survival (Holmes & Meier November, 1999), author Dorit
Bader Whiteman places the young Lonek within the history he was
unfortunate enough to experience. With the compassionate and
analytical eye of a psychologist, Dorit Whiteman takes us with
Lonek through a half-century of unfathomable terror and tales of
unbelievable luck.
The family escapes the Nazi
menace in Poland only to end up in the clutches of a different
evil --- the Soviet Union. Imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp
Lonek and his family are certain that they will not survive and
will be forgotten by the world. But a short-lived agreement
between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet Union
results in their miraculous release.
Spellbound readers will follow
Lonek and his parents in their search for safety as they flee
south to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Life there turns out to be harsh
--- they face disease and starvation. Driven to despair, Lonek's
mother leaves her son on the doorstep of an orphanage. But Lonek
is there less than one day when he is swept up in a dramatic
rescue operation, part of an internationally organized
kinderstransport. The lonely boy, along with 900 other Jewish
children, is taken from Tashkent to Teheran.
En route to Palestine, some of the Teheran children line up with
their counselors in India.
