No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust

by Chris Heath Narrated by Vas Eli

Overview

This by turns shattering and hope-giving account of prisoners who dug their way to freedom from the Nazis is both a stunning escape narrative and an object lesson in the ways we remember and continually forget the particulars of the Holocaust.

No Road Leading Back is the remarkable story of a dozen prisoners who escaped from the site where more than 70,000 Jews were shot in the Lithuanian forest of Ponar after the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe in 1941. Anxious to hide the incriminating evidence of the murders, the S.S. later in the war enslaved a group of Jews to exhume every one of the bodies and incinerate them all in a months-long labor-an episode whose specifics are staggering and disturbing, even within the context of the Holocaust. From within that dire circumstance emerges the improbable escape made by some of the men, who dug a tunnel with bare hands and spoons while they were trapped and guarded day and night-an act not just of bravery and desperation but of awesome imagination. Based on first-person accounts of the escapees and on each scrap of evidence that has been documented, repressed, or amplified since, this book resurrects their lives, while also providing a complex, urgent analysis of why their story has rarely been told, and never accurately. Heath explores the cultural use and misuse of Holocaust testimony and the need for us to face it-and all uncomfortable historical truths-with honesty and accuracy.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This chillingly meticulous chronicle of a dozen escapees from a Nazi extermination camp underscores the mechanics of heroism and the fallibility of memory. . . . Heath painstakingly sifts through the conflicting accounts over the decades, analyzing discrepancies, details, and contradictions. Ultimately, he learned, just like the survivors, ‘of how great the distance could be between speaking out and being heard.’ Utterly absorbing in its powerfully detailed horror and inspiring redemption—a must-read in Holocaust studies.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Chris Heath has chronicled one the bleakest, most disturbing events of the Holocaust. Previously little known, it's the story of a dozen Jews who were among those ordered to exhume the mass graves at Ponar, where most of the Jewish population of Lithuania’s capitol, Vilna—‘the Jerusalem of the North’—had been lined up and shot by drunken units of Einsatzgruppen. Exhume and burn the bodies: that was the order. Because the criminals were hiding the evidence. ‘All roads lead to Ponar,’ poet and partisan Abba Kovner had said. ‘And Ponar means death.’ These prisoners, intensely alive in Heath’s crystalline prose, were sent to a hell deeper than the lowest circle of Dante, where they set about losing their minds and planning their escape. The stories of these men will unsettle and change you. Anyone who cares about human nature and the question of good and evil owes this author their admiration and gratitude.” —Rich Cohen, New York Times bestselling author of Tough Jews and The Avengers

“This is one of the best books written about the Shoah by Bullets. Clearly written, superbly researched, it's a fascinating reminder of an unjustly neglected story about the Holocaust.” —David Herman, Chief Reviewer of The Jewish Chronicle

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159309297
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged