The Bridge over the San River. The Holocaust: A Missing Page

From the author’s first biography of the hero of Sobibor, Alexander Pechersky. In the autumn of 1939, the war split the Polish city of Przemyśl into two parts—German and Soviet. Across bridges and in shallow waters, Jews fled from the towns and settlements occupied by Hitler into the USSR. The fate of the fugitives was difficult: many were sent straight from the border to camps and prisons, but ultimately most of them managed to escape the inevitable doom of the Holocaust fire.

In this book you’ll learn about the further fate of these people, including the future head of the State of Israel, Menachem Begin, and one of the greatest Soviet composers, Mieczysław Weinberg. You’ll also read about how the border-guard lieutenant Ivan Krivonogov fiercely defended his D O T on the San River for as long as 12 days, and how, after three and a half years of captivity, he fled from the concentration camp on the island of Usedom in a German bomber. And you’ll learn how the Wehrmacht first lieutenant Albert Battel, by truck, transported Jews out of the Przemyśl ghetto, allowing many of them to survive.

The book also includes other, little-known plots based on the author’s archival research—the first of them from the beginning of World War II (September 1939), and the last ones from its end (August 1945).