Rating: 
Summary: The Avengers
Review: I picked this book up after watch "UPRISING" the mini-series. I can't tell you what a compelling and interesting story this is!!! I fell in love with the main characters. They are written just they were, the witer does not make them out to be good or evil, just says it like it was.
This book shows a completely different side to Jewish life during WWII. It is amazing!! For so long we have seen images of "walking dead" jews from WWI. These "avengers" are completely alive, fighting to live and fighting for justice during and after the war.
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Summary: Out of the ashes
Review: I was drawn to this book by the story of Abba Kovner--a Vilna native, a partisan and a poet. Although Cohen's writing is fine, it offers little poetic value. But like other readers, I could not put the book down. This novel-like non-fiction offers many layers. The book opens with the author's discovery of his family and roots in Israel. Cohen's grandmother--one of nine siblings in Plosk, Poland--immigrated to America in 1920. The family intended for everyone to follow, but like so many poor Eastern European Jews, ran out of money. No one else was able to leave. Several years after World War II, Cohen's grandmother learned from a former Polish neighbor that nearly every Jew in Plosk had perished. But her eldest brother's daughter, Ruzka Korczak, had survived as a partisan in the forests near Vilna, fighting with Abba Kovner and Vitka Kempner. She was the only member of the family in Poland who survived. The book swiftly transports readers to the Vilna ghetto and a tale of survival and great courage. Shortly after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact and German divisions flooded her area and town, Ruzka determined to move to Warsaw, where she hoped to meet the Zionist Youth Guard, HaShomer HaTza'ir. She planned to return to Plosk a few months later, when things calmed down. About 10 miles outside Warsaw, with the city in flames, she ran into a friend who told her HaShomir had moved to Vilna, in the Russian zone. She traveled three weeks to reach Bialystok and then crossed at night into Vilna, where shortly afterwards she met Vitka Kempner and Abba Kovner. At that time, 200,000 people lived in Vilna, a third of them Jewish. But the Jewish minority was heavily divided into factions--the communists, who distrusted Bundists, who distrusted Zionists, who distrusted Orthodox Jews. All of them distrusted assimilated Jews, and all feared the Soviet police, the NKVD. Threatened with arrest, Vitka fled Vilna, but returned weeks after the Nazis overtook both Vilna and her own location. On September 6, 1941, 30,000 Jews were forced into the Old Jewish Ghetto, where before only 1,000 had lived. By then, the Jewish people were gravely threatened. Abba Kovner hid in a nearby convent. But rumors of the murder of thousands in the forest of Ponar brought him back to Vilna, at Vitka's behest, to hear the story from a single survivor named Sara. At this dramatic juncture, Kovner realized that the Jewish people could escape only by battle. In December, 1941, he told fellow Ghetto residents that Ponar was a death trap and began to search for arms, an effort assisted by a former communist named Isaac Wittenberg, and Joseph Glassman. Together they located, bought and smuggled weapons into Vilna through the sewers, even obtaining grenades from the Mother Superior who had earlier hidden Kovner. Wittenberg was forced to surrender to the Nazis and committed suicide in prison. By 1943, the Germans were taking Jews from the Ghetto by increasing thousands and Kovner recognized that most would never return. He planned his escape, taking Vitka, Ruzka and others with him into the forests to fight. Leaving his mother was the hardest thing he had ever done. Her last words to him--"What will become of me?"-- forever rang in his ears. But Kovner put the survival of a few Jewish fighters above his family. When World War II was over, he went on fighting, alongside David Ben-Gurion, for his people's right to their ancient Jewish homeland of Israel. Nowadays we sometimes use the word hero lightly. Kovner and two daring female fighters really earned the label: They helped to lead the Jewish people triumphantly out of the ashes into an era of rebirth. We owe Rich Cohen our gratitude for bringing these heroes once again to life. Alyssa A. Lappen
Rating: 
Summary: Kids who raged, "We won't go like lambs to slaughter!"
Review: I'm a slower reader. I get bored by a lot of books but this was impossible to put down. Rich Cohen covers the pivotal story of young people confronted with outrageous injustice. While others were trying to placate the Nazis & the local Gentiles these teenagers said: NO--! The writing is very good with a combination of novelistic and journalistic styles. I feel very enriched by having read it and recommend the book 100%.
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Summary: Is it Resistance or Terrorism?
Review: No doubt Rich Cohen felt the spirit of his late cousin moving through him as he related the story of her and her two close friends' experiences as Jewish partisans during World War II. In a world where Jewish people were antagonized, persecuted, and slaughtered in mass numbers by a dominant force of Nazi supporters who wanted to see all Jews dead, the three partisans endure seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their struggle for survival and fight for ultimate dignity and perseverance against their oppressors. Cohen captures all of this with the stung but valiant voice of a generation that was nearly lost to fascism and genocide, but held out and thrived. The partisans' story begins like that of so many Holocaust victims who find that their rights are gradually being dismantled by the Nazi order that has overtaken their countries; and ends in Palestine immediately following the war, where, having lost families and friends, the three partisans rebuild their lives from scratch on the hot sands of what is to become Israel. Their story is painful at times, victorious at others, but always wrought with the tension of being one frantic step ahead of the Nazi enemy. Cohen relates his cousin's story honestly--although he clearly regards his cousin and her friends as courageous and admirable, he does not portray the partisans as being perfect. In The Avengers, the partisans' world is filled with infighting, corruption, and another type of politics in which executions take place for partisans who don't toe the line of the commander in charge. His suggestions that his cousin and her two friends might have been a "love triangle" are a little salacious and tedious, but overall, the book is excellent and shouldn't be missed for anyone wanting to learn more about this much-ignored part of Jewish history during World War II.
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Summary: An Amazing Testimony of Courage
Review: Rich Cohen has written an extraordinary tale of heroism and survival during the most horrendous and brutal moment in mankind's history. The tale of these three individuals, Abba Kovner, Ruzka Korczak and Vitka Kempner, shine through as living testimonies in the dark night of the Holocaust. You will not be able to put this book down as you race through the pages of "The Avengers." It is so well written and well documented that you wish you had 20 more books just like this one. It really is amazing how these individuals actually survived this horrible time, but they did in fact prevail and triumph against overwhelming odds. Perhaps the greatest challenge that these people faced in the end was not to end up like the monsters who had persecuted them. Rich Cohen has done an amazing and tremendous thing by writing this book, sharing with the world the incredible testimony of these three courageous individuals. After you finish reading this book, you will never think about the Holocaust in the same way.
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Summary: The most important story you never heard
Review: Rich Cohen's book, The Avengers: A Jewish War Story, tells the story of unknown heros. Abba Kovner and the Avengers saved lives, and gave hope in desperate times. This pivitol moment in Jewish History is a crucial element of the heroic history of the Jewish People. The Avengers descirbes desperate Jews who faught to live rather than being taken to their deaths like cattle. Rich Cohen's story is almost impossible to stop reading. This author's account of theses heroic people and thier feats of bravery is a must read for all people. An individual can not have a total understanding of the Jewish people without reading Rich Cohen's account of this story.
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Summary: One of the most engaging and horrifying books I have read
Review: The Avengers follows the life of Abba Kovner and his associates, through the horror of Nazism through attempts at revenge, and to a life in Palestine. Although I have read several books on the holocaust, I must admit, I could not bought this book down. Cohen's writing style is very engaging. Cohen makes no value judgements here; it is up to the reader to decide right and wrong. Although I think most people would have a tough time accepting what the avengers tried to do after the war, I cannot possibly judge them. I also cannot imagine living the horrors (which are spelled out in graphic detail) that these Jews went through. One is struck again and again by the brutality and sadism used by these Nazi animals. Although not a comforting book, I believe this book should be read by anyone with an interest in one of the most evil periods in history.
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Summary: Amazing Avengers--Cohen does it again!
Review: The Avengers is the untold story of three partisians--Ruscza, Vitka, and Abba--who met, fell in love, and ultimately waged an underground war against the Nazis. It is a story that everyone should know--women, men, children--across cultural, religious, and economic lines. It tells of these three seemingly ordinary individuals and how each one overcame impossible odds and not only survived, but fought back. It is a story of true heroes. Rich Cohen does an amazing job of putting the reader in the Ghetto, in the forest, in the cities, and in the desert--caputring landscapes, faces, personalities, and the mood of the time. Parts of the story are dreamlike--pure beauty. Read this book!!!
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Summary: Good book very badly read
Review: The book is pretty good. The reading is awful. King pauses at unnatural spots, runs sentences together without a pause (obscuring the logic), places the emphasis in weird places, and even mispronounces some words. I have never listened to amore badly read taped book.
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Summary: A great lesson of how to live a life
Review: This is a beautiful book and a story of true heroism. It tells of the Second World War as seen from the East, and of course it tells the story of a few stubborn people - they just happened to be Jewish -- who refused to be made into victims. I found it inspiring not only in regards to history but also to the world today, and how people can look at their life and realize in every moment they are given the privelage of choosing right over wrong. Which is to say, though the characters do not believe in God, I found in the book something religious, spiritual, even mystical. Mostly, it is a book I could not put down, and that, from the first page, carried me into another world and another time. I often felt as if I were making decisions right along with Abba, Ruzka and Vitka.
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