Jacob's Courage
Subtitle: A Holocaust Love Story
Publisher: MAZO PUBLISHERS
Published: March 15, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 524
ISBN-13: 9789657344248
Subjects: Holocaust; History / Holocaust; History - General History
First sentence: It was already colder than normal, this dreary, dark winter in the Austrian Alps.  Thick, gray snow clouds rushed through the dark forest, on their way to the frosty cliffs above.  It was as though nature was preparing itself for the onslaught of terror soon to follow – freezing itself from the approaching evil.  Here in the cold, dark Austrian mountains near Salzburg, the world slept peacefully.  Yet, horror was on the horizon.
Description: Jacob's Courage chronicles the dazzling beauty of passionate love and enduring bravery in a lurid world where the innocent are brutally murdered.  In 1939, seventeen-year-old Austrians Jacob Silverman and Rachael Goldberg were bright, talented, dazzlingly happy and deeply in love.  But, because they were Jews, their families lost everything.  The Nazis took away their jobs, their houses and apartments, their possessions and their money.  They lost contact with loved ones.  Finally, they lost their liberty.  Jacob and Rachael "grew up" during the Holocaust.  As teenagers, they survived the beatings, rapes, and murderous acts of the Nazis, enjoyed the physical and spiritual pleasure of being in love and were able to become husband and wife in the Theresienstadt camp.  They escaped, joined the partisans and fought the Nazi enemy, before Jacob and his father were imprisoned in Auschwitz.
Notes: This is the story of the Silverman family; an ordinary Austrian Jewish family who experienced profound tragedy during the Holocaust.  The novel was compiled after extensive Holocaust research.  Members of my family perished in the Holocaust and my mother experienced violent attacks upon her family in a pogrom against their Russian Jewish village.  Portions of the novel are based upon my mother’s memoirs.
Table of contents: title: Chapter 1 ~ The Darkness Arrives .................................................................. 11