A JEW IN THE WOODS

Rosenfeld presents a new English translation of a diary of a Holocaust survivor.

Kagan was a renowned Jewish scholar, editor of Yiddish literature, and author of several books following his immigration to the United States from Italy in 1950. He first published the diary of his Holocaust survival in the original Yiddish in 1955. Readers now have access to an English version of this diary; Kagan’s daughter donated the handwritten original to the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York after Kagan’s death in 1993. It’s a firsthand account, starting in 1943, of a survivor whose experience included one of the lesser-known aspects of the Holocaust: the fact that many Jewish people in Eastern Europe managed to evade the Gestapo by hiding in forest camps. To be sure, this diary covers much more than this topic, including the perilous situation of the “Righteous Gentiles” who hid the author and other Jews until they could do so no longer, as well as Kagan’s tough decision to flee the Kovno Ghetto, which he regretted before learning the fate of those who’d stayed behind. Still, it’s Kagan’s account of hiding in nature with his wife, sister-in-law, and others, evading predators both human and animal, that makes this work stand out: (“That first night we hardly shut our eyes. Animals of all sorts scream and growl.”) Overall, this diary offers raw, firsthand recollections, conveying fear, despair, and hope—as well as the later challenges of readjusting to freedom. It also honestly shows the ambivalence of the people who sheltered Kagan and others in a one-room cottage with few hiding places. Portions of the work can be very difficult to read, such as a recollection of sexual liaisons between a Jewish woman and her rescuers, which the author tentatively acknowledges may not have been consensual.

A welcome and necessary addition to the growing canon of firsthand accounts of Jewish survival during World War II.