This fantastic book weaves a story about Jewish life in Czarist Russia that is endearing...and unfortunately, gone forever. This effort succeeds on many levels..as a historical footprint, family biography, and wonderful personality sketches. Best of all, it chronicles the many sucesses, and many tragedies of the Bercinsky family. To any that are interested in Jewish family life in the Czarist "Pale of Settlement"...this is a must read!

Skakun's experiences are comparable to those of Yehuda Nir in "The Lost Childhood" and Moshe Perlman in "Europa, Europa". The crowning irony is Skakun's (almost) joining the Waffen SS in order to hide his Jewish identity, and to survive. However, there are just a few errors of background historical fact which mar "On Burning Ground". E.g., on page 203 Julius Streicher is named as the founder of the Nazi paper "Volkische Beobachter". This is wrong. Streicher founded "Der Sturmer". Volkische Beobachter was an outgrowth of "Munchener Beobachter", a paper purchased and re-founded by Dietrich Eckart. This is the sort of mistake that better editing might have caught. But "On Burning Ground" still stands as a riveting account of survival through quick thinking and a lot of luck.

I have always had a deep interest in the Holocaust, I think it is because of the fact that it occured so recent in our history, it is so incredible that in our modern society, a country such as Germany was so willing to carry out such a morbid and shockingly sinister plan of brutality and murder. That ordinary citizens could be so callous and treacherous,...I am amazed!

Joseph Skakun, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, takes us on a journey into his mind numbing past. Divine intervention, solid logic and humblness, play a major role in his reason for survival.

Personally I think this story is very unique and wouldn't be surprised to see it become a movie.

What can I add to the above? Not much. I rarely read Holocaust memoirs, but this one was amazing. Michael's father, Joseph, a Talmudic scholar with blue eyes and blond hair, who tried to save his mother in Navaredok/Novogrudek Poland, failed, and fled to the forests and to Vilna. As a circumcised male in Vilna, Joseph took on the identity of a Muslim Tatar, studied Islam, and became a foreign laborer in Berlin. A hidden Jew pretending to be a Muslim living in the Nazi capital during the War. And then he enlisted in the SS!

This is a thrilling tale of a charismatic, compassionate leader who saves Jewish lives from certain death by establishing a partisan base in the Forest of Belorussia. However, there are many questions left unanswered. Is it the hero that steps out from history to save the people (as the author seems to suggest)‚ or is it circumstance and coincidence? Bielski was a peasant living on the edge of the forest: he was perfectly positioned to do what he did. Where does these turns of events stand in relation to the Holocaust or the Partisan Movement? These questions are not really answered, but it was a lucky few survivors, geographically well-placed in local towns who managed to make it to the safety of the forest and Bielski's partisan band. The vast majority of Jews were not that fortunate, and their story is often less than heroic. With that in mind "The Bielski Partisans" can be recommended as a fine his-story of a small localized group of individuals, but not as History in any wider sense.

This book tells the largely unkown story of the Bielski Partisans. The only Jewish partisans that fought against the Germans in WWII. There are 30,000 Jews alive today from the 1,200 that were saved and fought with them in the forests. To get into the group, one had to kill a German by hand to get his weapon! This book relates the absolutely true story, that showed what happened when Jews were not victims, but organized, guerilla fighters.

Being the son of Aron Bielski the youngest of the 12 Bielski children I must say Ms.Tec did a wonderful and accurate job.Since Defiance was published there has been a great amonut interset raised on the Bielski Brothers.The book is informative and suspensful, it tell stories previously only known to the family and members of The Bielski Brigrade.

This book was penetrating and witty, giving a portrait of pre-war Vitebsk that makes the reader feel transported back to that time and location. Sweet without being cloying, the memoir bursts from the pages as if Bella were in front of you, holding a conversation with you.

With illustrations by her husband Marc, Bella Chagall's memoir comes from the poignant brush strokes of childhood, focusing on Jewish holidays and family life. If you are curious about the life your immigrant forebears left behind, this will satisfy. I highly recommend it.

Jan does a good job in outlining the course of events that occurred over a long period of time. My main complaint about his work is that he maintains a focus on the intelligentsia to a point where I as a reader felt that there was a large void left to be filled. Nevertheless, this book is filled with interesting tidbits that will well feed a historical mind. Even though he quite clearly writes as a patriot and does little to explain the current clamboring for Belarus to reunite with the Russians, he manages to maintain something of a level hand through the course of the book in regards to the Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Poles. Especially towards the end, he provides some insightful analysis into the current mood of the country, though his economic analysis is, at best, limited. Should Mr. Zaprudnik ever choose to extend his writings on this rather interesting country, I would like to see him write more on the trends of society at large, for I think he would provide a very intriguing insight into a rather obscure field.

Jan Zaprudnik poignantly records what was and what might have been in his beloved Belarus. He writes from a nationalist point of view about a country which finds it hard to be nationalistic, currently preferring a wider slavic entity in wishing to unite with Russia. The book attempts to unify a shifting geography and disparate history of Lithuanians, Russians and Belarusians into that of a single nation. The result is as incohesive as modern Belarus. Therein may lie its genius or dearth.

Author Marples has taken an exceptionally difficult topic, the emergence of the Republic of Belarus, and developed a highly informative report on the emergence of a very tortured nation. His assessment of Chernobyl-related problems, the country's and the world's response and the implications for future generations of Belarusians was especially well documented and portrayed an assessment of the country that could only have been developed by an author who was especially familiar with the day-to-day grass-roots response to the Chernobyl disaster. His book showed an especially strong understanding of relief work in the Gomel oblast. Perhaps the only weakness of this book was that it was written as Alexander Lukashenko was coming to power and, as such, provided a backdrop but not a full assessment of subsequent events. It would be very informative to view this author's assessment of the implications of Lukashenko's regieme on Belarus.

Insight's City Guides combine stunning photography with literate text and a smattering of basic travel information. The Insight Venice guide is worth adding to your bookshelf, but its practical advice is getting a bit long in the tooth and its heft makes it less than ideal as a take-along guide. - Durant Imboden, Venice for Visitors, http://govenice.miningco.co

The serious student of World War II will appreciate the immense scholarship that lies behind the writing of "Soviet Blitzkrieg." The author, Dr. Walter S. Dunn, Jr., gives ample testimony to the high scholastic demands of his doctorate in history. In his years of researching the archives of World War II and its eastern front and amassing figures on the relative strength of Russian and German military forces, Dr. Dunn displays the rigorous discipline of the seasoned professional historian. So dedicated was Dr. Dunn to his reasearch tht he acquired a rudimentary knowledge of the German and Russian languages, the better to understand the written records of both sides.

The book describes in great detail each offensive of the blitzkrieg from beginning to ultimate outcome. This is the first time that such an epic description of the Russian-German struggles on the eastern front has appeared in English. "Soviet Blitzkrieg" is one of several authoritative descriptions of World War II events published by the author. Other books are "Second Front Now," "Hitler's Nemesis," and "Kursk."

The reader less familiar with the battles for White Russia will benefit from having on hand a detailed map of Russia. Chapter 1, titled "The Strategic Position," describes a complicated series of movement on the eastern front that would be more understandable were the reader able to follow the action on a map.

In its 248 indexed pages, the student of World War II will find this book to be a treasure trove of authoritative information.

I'm glad this book is not sold anymore! When my mother-in-law (a NZer) read it and then came with us to visit Kiev, Lviv, Moscow and some small and mid-sized cities and towns, she said she read your book, but LUCKILY didn't find it to be true!!!

I think the author of the book needs to visit Ukraine and Russia soonish and re-write the book, or get some treatment for..., racism, cold war and a shield from what the media brings to your TV screens (everyone knows that only bad news and breakthroughs make news), so please use your brains!

I read the book after my mother-in-law's remarks and was sick in my stomach, for quite a while.

I lived in Russia for a year and traveled extensively in European Russia and Siberia and this book never failed me. Although prices fluctuated, everything else was absolutely accurate and very thoroughly researched. The writers went to enormous lengths to write what is hands-down the best travel guide to Russia. The new edition is due out this April. Mine is already on order.

I found this book fascinating. It was great the way the writer bought into consideration the fact that no-one wants to travel to the places in question. When reading this book be sure to enquire at your local travel agent for any misconseptions. great book. 5 star

I really didn't like this. Found much of it to be gibberish and incomprehensible. It seemed to be about a man who was in line to be Tsar of Russia in the 200th century rebuilding his country on a new planet that happened to be booby trapped by a race of really nasty insects who eat each others livers. It's a future in which most of the humans have cybernetics and live hundreds of years and some machines have developed their own independent identities. This last might have been an interesting idea, but it wasn't really developed. And neither were the reasons for rebuilding Russia ever made clear. Some characters somewhere seemed to think it was being rebuilt to become an amusement park or something. There were characters who were engineers of worlds who reminded me of nothing so much as Slartibartfast who designed fjords on the coast of Africa in "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy". And there was nothing Russian about the book other than a few names and the fact that the characters keep saying the cities that would be built would be like Russian cities. There's a character named "Baba Yaga" who is supposed to be all mysterious and brilliant, but the concept just falls flat. I didn't get any sense of the author's working with folklore at all.

Finally, I'm sorry to be so negative about this, but if you have a romantic bone in your body and don't enjoy insects in your sci-fi this one is a definite miss. Aside from the gross-out factor, which some people may like, I don't see much else to recommend it.

I haven't bought any sci-fi books for ages as I can't find much I like, but this book I did. Andrei and the other characters were likeable and sympathetic (unlike in so many sci-fi novels) and the story was interesting - I liked the focus on Russia, or the Russia of the future (instead of the usual tedious gung-ho American protagonists ;-)). Perhaps my only two quibbles were 1) the resurrection of the Tsarist/Imperial past (a brutal system which saw tyrants oppress much of the population for centuries) and 2) the continuation of religion - in the form of the Orthodox Church - into the far future (also an anachronistic institution that helped keep Russia in the Dark Ages). One hopes that humans would have evolved beyond the need for religion 20,000 years into the future!

This was a very awesome book, I've read it three times (I haven't even read the Hobbit that much). This book keeps you on the edge of your seat and guessing until the very end. I'm looking forward to the sequel. :)