A sweeping saga of a family and community fighting for survival against the ravages of history. Set between events depicted in Fiddler on the Roof and Schindler’s List, Lisa Brahin’s Tears over Russia brings to life a piece of Jewish history that has never before been told. Between 1917 and 1921, twenty years before the Holocaust began, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish pogroms across the Ukraine. Lisa grew up transfixed by her grandmother Channa’s stories about her family being forced to flee their hometown of Stavishche, as armies and bandit groups raided village after village, killing Jewish residents. Channa described a perilous three-year journey through Russia and Romania, led at first by a gallant American who had snuck into the Ukraine to save his immediate family and ended up leading an exodus of nearly eighty to safety. With almost no published sources to validate her grandmother’s tales, Lisa embarked on her incredible journey to tell Channa’s story, forging connections with archivists around the world to find elusive documents to fill in the gaps of what happened in Stavishche. She also tapped into connections closer to home, gathering testimonies from her grandmother’s relatives, childhood friends and neighbors. The result is a moving historical family narrative that speaks to universal human themes—the resilience and hope of ordinary people surviving the ravages of history and human cruelty. With the growing passage of time, it is unlikely that we will see another family saga emerge so richly detailing this forgotten time period. Tears Over Russia eloquently proves that true life is sometimes more compelling than fiction.

Get the Summary of Lisa Brahin's Tears Over Russia in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Tears Over Russia" is a historical narrative that traces the life of Fay Berkova, a Jewish woman from the Kiev Guberniya region, through the tumultuous times of early 20th-century Russia. The book begins with Fay's divorce from Samuel and subsequent marriage to Carl Cutler, a wheat merchant. The Cutlers raise seven children in Skibin amidst the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, pogroms, and World War I...

Exile in Siberia. The story of a 20-year fight to reunite a family across the Iron Curtain.

This “ambitious” New York Times bestseller tells the multigenerational saga of a Russian-Jewish family who emigrates to America and eventually Israel (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Chavala Rabinsky is sixteen when her mother dies and she becomes the caretaker of her five siblings. Beautiful and wise beyond her years, Chavala catches the eye of Dovid Landau, a poor cobbler whose dreams transform her life when he marries her. But Odessa, Russia, is a dangerous place in 1905. The Landaus flee the pogroms of their homeland for Ottoman-ruled Palestine—until escalating violence forces the family to become wanderers again. Rich in passion and scope, No Time for Tears sounds a call of love and liberation that will ring out for generations to come.

Narrated in the tradition of Tolstoy's confessional trilogy and Nabokov's autobiog­raphy, Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story is a searing account of growing up a Jewish refusenik, of a young poet's rebellion against totalitarian culture, and of Soviet fantasies of the West during the Cold War. Shrayer's remembrances ore set against a rich backdrop of politics, travel, and ethnic conflict on the brink of the Soviet empire's collapse. His moving story offers generous doses of humor and tenderness, counterbalanced with longing and violence.

The small village in Pomerania in northern Germany provided a peaceful haven for the childhood years of author Ingeborg E. Ryals. But in 1939 the beginning of World War II irrevocably changed her idyllic life. In this memoir Ryals shares her first hand experiences as the war began to affect every aspect of her life. At the age of fifteen, she had to dig trenches behind the front lines and spent many days hiding in fear of the Soviet Army as it invaded and pillaged her village. Diphtheria and typhoid epidemics swept the country. She survived a bout of diphtheria but lingered near death for days on end with typhoid fever. There was little food to sustain them. At the age of eighteen, she was shipped to a labor camp operated by the Russian military on an island in the Baltic Sea. Ryals also recounts her escape and her eventual marriage to an American. With photos included, The Tears of War narrates a very real story of the tragedy of war. It shows Ryals perseverance and her ability to overcome obstacles in an effort to survive.

The New York Times bestseller with more than 1 million copies sold worldwide | Now a Hulu limited series starring Joey King and Logan Lerman Inspired by the incredible true story of one Jewish family separated at the start of World War II, determined to survive—and to reunite—We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds. “Love in the face of global adversity? It couldn't be more timely.” —Glamour It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety. As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere. An extraordinary, propulsive novel, We Were the Lucky Ones demonstrates how in the face of the twentieth century’s darkest moment, the human spirit can endure and even thrive.