A (deeply researched) story of courage and fortitude in hellish circumstances. This book needed to be written.

Now that I have assigned it five stars and written an enthusiastic first paragraph, allow me to offer a few critiques.

1
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Insufficient context given.
- American readers do not understand the enmity among different types of socialists and communists, so they don't get why certain Vilners resented each other.
- Americans younger than I probably don't understand the blind anti-communism that prevented Schmerke from becoming an American citizen.
- And I don't understand why an American Jew advised against giving a particular artifact to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, advising that it would not be given the care it should receive.

2
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Insufficient copy editing. A few examples of errors that should have been corrected:

- Amateurish writing: "Off from the sports field".

- Silly error: "An arm grabbed at Plonsky's clothes". Um, I think it was a hand.

- Bad word choice: "caste clay" for "cast clay", "hoards" for "hordes".

- Grammatical error: "It's" for "Its".