Shalom Yoran Knihy

While recuperating in a hospital after World War II, a Polish refugee wrote at length about his remarkable experiences in war-torn Europe. The Defiant , his memoir, is the account of a young man who refused to yield to the German onslaught and chose instead to become a Jewish resistance fighter. Chronicling the bravery of a small group of men and women who carried on a forest war, this extraordinary book sheds light on events that few know of in this country.

Shalom Yoran, born Selim Sznycer, was fourteen years old when the Germans occupied Poland in 1939, and he and his family spent the next three years on the run, trying to escape the Nazi mobile killing units. The Defiant is Shalom Yoran's story, a detailed first-person account of his experiences from 1939 to 1945. In the dense forests and vast swamplands, he and his brother banded together with other Jews in Eastern Poland to fight back against the Nazis. They used guns and explosives, and cunning and ingenuity. They joined non-Jewish partisans, and waged behind-the-lines guerrilla warfare against the Germans. They ambushed convoys, attacked garrisons, derailed trains, all the while hardscrabbling for each day's survival.