Description: Despite leading the only successful prisoner revolt at a World War II death camp, Aleksandr "Sasha" Pechersky never received the public recognition he deserved in his home country of Russia. This story of a forgotten hero reveals the tremendous difference in memorial cultures between societies in the West and societies in the former Communist world
Brief description:
Selma Leydesdorff is professor of oral history and culture at the University of Amsterdam and is co-editor (with Nanci Adler) of the Memory and Narrative series for Transaction Publishers
Review Quotes:
"It has taken a long time for Sasha Pechersky, the unsung hero of the 1943 revolt in the Sobibor death camp, to find the right voice to tell his story. Selma Leydesdorff's sad and tragic tale describes the evil he overcame and the injustice that defeated him 'in a world that remained dark.' Her love of truth and her passion for history, compelled by her own family's long-ago loss, highlights the quick success and slow demise of this Russian Jew's remarkable courage and idealism."
Robert Skloot, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA