In this gripping and heartfelt memoir, Jack and Rochelle Sutin recount their shared struggle to survive the Holocaust in Poland.
Though they grew up in the same village, Jack and Rochelle only knew each other at a distance, having once shared a clumsy high school dance. After the German invasion, they were torn from their families and their homes and forced to live in ghetto labour camps by the Nazis. Each managed a daring escape into the surrounding forest, where they happened upon each other and, along with thousands of other Jews, banded together to join the Polish underground resistance.
Narrated alternately between the two of them (as told to their son Lawrence), Jack & Rochelle illuminates the extreme conditions the pair endured while living for years in a bunker in the woods - near-starvation, disease, and the constant threat of death - and the impossible love affair that grew out of it, and lasted more than fifty years. More than an account of stark survival, Jack & Rochelle is an inspirational story of courage, resiliency, and, above all, true love.