|
|
How would
you feel if, at age seventeen, the
government removed you from school,
evicted you from your home, looted your
bank account and took all of your
family's possessions? How would you feel
if ruthless police prevented your
parents from working and then deported
you and your loved ones to a prison camp
run by brutal taskmasters? How would you
feel if you suddenly lost contact with
everyone that you know and love? How
would you feel if you were sent to the
most frightening place in history, and
then forced to perform unspeakable acts
of horror in order to remain alive?
Below you will find the synopsis:
Jacob’s Courage: a Holocaust Love Story
© 2007 Mazo Publishers, By Charles S.
Weinblatt. You may then follow the link
at the bottom of the page and read the
book. You may also wish to purchase the
book through
Amazon
or
Barnes & Noble. |
Jacob's Courage is a
tender coming of age love story of two young adults
living in Salzburg at the time when the Nazi war
machine enters Austria. This historical novel
explores the dazzling beauty of passionate love and
enduring bravery in a lurid world where the innocent
are brutally murdered. From desperate despair, to
unforgettable moments of chaste beauty, Jacob’s
Courage examines a constellation of emotions during
a time of incomprehensible brutality.
This is the story of an Austrian Jewish family's
experience during World War II. The protagonists are
seventeen year-old Jacob Silverman and his lover,
Rachael Goldman. Jacob’s childhood is magnificent,
in every way. He has a very close and affectionate
relationship with his father, a warm and loving
physician named Moshe. In 1939, Jacob is deeply in
love with Rachael Goldberg, the daughter of Moshe’s
colleague. She has swept him completely off his
feet. Jacob prepares to study medicine, as his
father had done before him. Yet, he cannot bear to
leave Rachael, the love of his life. With Rachael,
life is beautiful and promising, the future
enticing.
One night, Jacob has an incredibly vivid and
realistic nightmare, in which he is forced to feed
the dead bodies of Jews into a gigantic inferno. In
the dream, he is killed by an SS guard. Greatly
disturbed by this ghastly vision, and influenced by
his father, Jacob begins to believe that he will
have an important role to play in the future. Jacob
reaches the conclusion that he will one day be
responsible for saving innocent people.
Jacob and Rachael explore their burgeoning love,
while conditions surrounding them steadily
deteriorate. From their beautiful existence in
majestic Salzburg, the lovers and their families
slowly lose everything – their homes, jobs, school,
money, possessions and finally their liberty. Moved
from ghetto to ghetto, starvation and disease take a
heavy toll. One by one, family members fall victim
to the horror. Life became a disaster, but love
never falters. Jacob and Rachael are soul mates,
inseparable, devoted and faithful. The depth of
their passion and their commitment to Judaism is
explored during their secret wedding ceremony inside
the concentration camp called Theresienstadt.
Consider gentle and kind Moshe, burdened by guilt
for failing to move his family out of danger while
time permitted. He descends into a morass of
depression. Moshe continues to practice medicine in
the camps. But the tools of his trade and medicines
are denied him by his Nazi tormentors. Finally, in
Auschwitz, Moshe is asked to perform medical
experiments on prisoners by the infamous Dr. Josef
Mengele.
Experience an awakening in Jacob as he takes violin
lessons from some of the greatest musicians of
Europe inside Theresienstadt. Feel the frustration
when Rachael and Jacob are paraded in front of the
Red Cross, in a grand deception. Rachael is brutally
raped by the cruel camp commandant. Consider her
misery when she soon discovers that she is pregnant.
Feel the exhilaration of a daring escape from
Theresienstadt through a tunnel that could collapse
at any moment. Run with Jacob and Rachael as they
join the Czech and Polish partisans and participate
in military missions against the Nazis. Witness the
anguish as Jacob is shot, recaptured and tortured by
the Gestapo for information. His untreated leg
wound never heals properly, leaving him crippled for
life.
Although hundreds of miles apart, Jacob and Rachael
have simultaneous dreams in which they walk on
beautiful mountains overlooking a strange desert
that is green with bountiful agriculture on one side
and barren on the other. Their handsome dark-haired
child walks with them as they gaze upon the
extraordinary land that calls out to them. The
meaning of the dream escapes Jacob and Rachel. But
its importance is never far from their thoughts.
Rachael’s baby is born in Poland, where friends of
the partisans protect them. She is driven there
during a terrifying snowstorm by Anton, leader of
the partisans. Anton is deeply in love with Rachael.
She resists his advances with all of her might. For
Rachael, there will never be another love besides
Jacob. She is obsessed with rescuing Jacob and his
parents. Rachael and Anton trudge through the
storm, escaping the Gestapo at every turn. Anton
protects her fearlessly. Experience Rachael’s terror
when Anton is critically wounded at a military
checkpoint. Believeing him dead, she is forced to
abandon his body and drive on to Poland by herself.
On the way, she goes into rapid and painful labor.
Rachael’s baby is born in a Polish hospital. He has
blonde hair and blue eyes, bearing a strong
resemblance to the evil Theresienstadt commandant.
At first, Rachael despises the child. Later, she
grows to love him. Anton made arrangements to have a
Jewish family, the Levins, care for the baby, as
Rachael rejoins the partisans. Sol and Freda Levin,
hiding in a farmhouse from the Gestapo, swear to
protect the child with their own lives. Their
devotion to Rachael and the baby is unquestioned.
Weeks later, the Gestapo arrives, torturing and
murdering all of them, including the baby.
Ironically, they murder the child of the German
commandant.
Jacob and his parents are deported from
Theresienstadt. Ride the crowded, fetid train to
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Jacob’s mother is
immediately selected for “special treatment.”
Reflect on the dilemma of Jacob’s father, a
physician asked to participate in medical
experiments with the mendacious Dr. Mengele. Moshe
provides his own rebellion, at the cost of his life.
Jacob slides toward death from starvation, disease
and his terrible leg injury. Yet, he is driven by
the premonition that God has a plan for him to lead
a rebellion. In Auschwitz, Jacob befriends many
prisoners and kapos. They help him to collect data
and photographs proving the terrifying Nazi criminal
acts. Jacob manages to get the documents to the
Allies through Rachael. In the process, his close
friend Paul is killed, protecting the information
and saving Rachael’s life.
Even while separated by hundreds of miles, Jacob and
Rachael continue to have identical, repeated
dreams. They walk on a silent mountainside with a
beatiful young boy who is their son. His long, dark
curls flow out behind as he races around his parents
in joy. Somehow, they know that they have been made
whole and happy, in a land that belongs to them.
Gazing down, they see green, cultivated fields
filled with luscious crops on one side, with
brown, barren desert on the other side. The wind
whips aroud them, breaking the stoic silence of the
mountain. Suddenly the moutain is shaken by the
crashing of artillery from on top. Far below, in a
tiny agricultural settlement, a puff of smoke marks
the explosion.
Like ants flowing from a disturbed antill, people
run for cover in the far distance. The attack
continues, as the frightened child runs to Jacob and
Rachel with tears in his eyes. Who is attacking
their beautiful home? Each night, the dream is
repeated. But, where is this place? Why is it
repeatedly attacked?
Jacob joins the Auschwitz orchestra. His ability to
play violin saves his life, temporarily. But the
psychological toll is horrific. Day after day, he
plays for the long queue, waiting their turn for the
gas chamber. He begins to have new nightmares,
haunted by the faces of the innocent children,
waiting for an underserved, premature death.
Jacob's obsession about saving innocent prisoners
deepens. Is it his imagination? Or, is it a message
from God? Jacob feels compelled to lead a rebellion
against the brutal Nazi guards. But why has this
vision been placed in his head?
Finally, when the orchestra is no longer needed,
Jacob becomes Sonderkommando. His horrid dream from
five years earlier comes to fruition, as Jacob is
forced to push the dead bodies of recently killed
Jewish prisoners into the crematoria fire. The
horrid vision, implanted years ago in a terrifying
nightmare, has become reality.
In January 1945, Russian troops draw near to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Surviving prisoners are
force-marched into the frozen countryside. Without
coats, hats, gloves and shoes, the prisoners soon
begin to perish. The innocent prisoners of Auschwitz
are exposed to a brutal, frigid winter, with no
protection. Frostbite and hypothermia run rampant.
Every prisoner who falls is shot. Jacob manages to
stay on his feet, but he is forced to watch as
hundreds of innocent survivors are shot, one after
another. The icy temperatures cut deep into his
bones. He cannot feel his extremities. Jacob's
fingers and toes turn into a black morass of dead
tissue and chronic pain.
The survivors are forced onto a train. Many cars
have no roof. The frigid January wind plummets down
upon them. Many more Holocaust victims die. Still,
Jacob remains alive. The train stops in Austria,
Jacob’s home country. Weighing little more than half
his prior weight, Jacob has very little strength
remaining. Still, Jacob is convinced that God has a
plan for him to lead a prisoner rebellion.
As the survivors are marched from the train station
through Bratislava, Austrian civilians are repelled,
as though the survivors had Leprosy. They abandon
nearby urban sidewalks as though death itself
eminated from the Auschwitz prisoners. Finally, in
the countryside, Jacob spots his location – the
scene God had implanted in his mind. The sleeping
leader finally awakens.
The emaciated survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau are
guarded by the worst of the SS - untrained youth and
frail old men. Despite losing half their number
during the long, bitter march through the glacial
countryside, the survivors have a ten to one
superiority in numbers. On Jacob’s command, they use
it to incapacitate the SS and confiscate their
weapons. They also commandeer a truck filled with
rifles, grenades, mortars and ammunition.
Jacob creates a military bunker inside a nearby
cave, which he had also seen in his dreams. Thanks
to his military training with the partisans, Jacob,
becomes a powerful and compelling leader. His men
proudly fight to the death for him. Being mostly
Jewish, they call themselves the "First Brigade of
the Fighters of Israel". For more than three days,
the starving band of gaunt Auschwitz survivors
defeat wave after wave of German army attacks.
Jacob’s epiphany that he was God’s instrument comes
to fruition with frightening clarity. Like the
biblical Jacob, his dreams were prophetic visions of
the future. In a modern-day David and Goliath tale,
Jews battle Nazis. A survivor paints two blue
horizontal stripes on a pure white cloth with a Star
of David in the center. He ties it to a pole and
raises the flag that would one day represent the
State of Israel.
Will Jacob and Rachael survive? Will they ever see
the beautiful dark-haired child and the distant
mountainside that called to them in dreams? Read
Jacob's Courage to find out.
|