“No to Fear” is often read like a Wikipedia entry without hyperlinks, but “Mordechai Anielewicz: No to Despair” by Rachel Hausfater (“The Little Boy Star: An Allegory of the Holocaust”) is also Alison L. Translated by Strayer. Is a thrilling biography with the immediacy and emotional impact of the novel.
“No to Despair” begins on the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943. Last summer, the Nazis deported 300,000 Jews from the ghetto and killed most of them in the Treblinka extermination camp. In January 1943, they arrested more Jews and attempted to deport them, but were thwarted by 10 resistance soldiers, including 24-year-old Anielevich.
So in April he rallyes the people left in the ghetto to fight back, even if it was the cause of the loss. Their goal is not to win, Anielevich tells them, to fight to death. It is the death of choice, otherwise it is definitely not the death forced by them.
Germany’s invasion of Poland, the creation of the Jewish ghetto, the action that rounded up prisoners, the camp where they were killed, etc., are clearly and calmly explained with few footnotes. .. Properly placed flashbacks were expelled from paramilitary organizations to retaliation for the way Anielevich formed a gang as a boy to protect Warsaw’s neighborhood from anti-Semitic attacks and to retaliate against persecution. Shows the method.
Like “No to Fear,” the story is told from an observer’s perspective, but here it’s someone in the same age group as the target audience for the series: 13-year-old Feigele, “Little Messenger Girl, Former Smuggler.” , Lost the whole family at Action. She is helped by Anielevich on her way home from the ghetto’s outing, and she is his devoted follower and constant companion.
In Faigere’s eyes, Anielevich is an “angel”, his thoughts are “wonderful”, and their quest is “sacred”. He is “pure heart, painfully calm, incredibly brave” and, of course, “Mensh”. From time to time, Faigere’s longing comes across like an embarrassing teenage romance, which is a good example of how Anielevich could encourage hundreds of ghettos to join him for desperate reasons.
