In Lands Not My Own: A Wartime Journey

by Reuben Ainsztein

Book Overview

Reuben Ainsztein fled the pogroms of Wilno, Poland, when he was only sixteen. Matriculating at a university in Brussels, Ainsztein was again confronted with the virulence of anti-Semitism when the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375507574
• ISBN13: 9780375507571
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Response

I am writing this in response to the reviewer from Bloominton.First , let me correct an inaccuracy. Reuven married Pat after the end of the War (I believe in the late 40's/50's). The cover details are incorrect in suggesting he was married in 1941 but this was simply not picked up at the time. Apologies.Reuven wrote the story in the late 60's and tried to get it published - we even have the envelope in which it was returned from a prospective publisher. We do not know why but perhaps there was less interest than there is today. When Reuven died his obituary in the London Times (of which we have a copy) makes specific mention on the unpublished manuscript and an excerpt was actually published in the Sunday Times at around the same time.After he died, no-one tried to get it published and the typescript remained with Pat. Following her death several years, it passed to her niece, Janet. It was only after Janet's death that my wife and I (my wife is Janet's daughter)found the typescript when clearing out the family house for sale. We then contacted a literary agent and eventually signed a publishing contract.I cannot tell you exactly when each page was written but I can swear that the document we found is the document that was published. We still have the original typescript - it is all on similar paper and on the same typewriter. There is no evidence to suggest anything suspicious at all.

Editorial reviews do Ainsztein justice

The editorial reviews shown at this website accurately summarize the book, and I will not rehash them. I just want to add my strong personal recommendation. Ainsztein's odyssey/exodus was of particular interest in light of my recently having seen Polanski's "The Pianist". I found the book to be compelling reading, and believe that Jewish readers would find it even more so.

This book is a must !

In Lands Not My Own is unassuming and modest but all the more powerful for its understated charm.Ainsztein was clearly a thoughtful but heroic man. His book chronicles a most incredible flights across war-torn Europe. Written with all the elegance of a Conrad novel, this book takes us right into Ainsztein's own personal heart of darkness.In many, many ways , this book is as important as Anne Frank's diary. It should be compulsory reading on evry high school history, and indeed English literature, booklist.It is rare to find a historical memoir that is so well written, so well observed and so elegantly portrayed.If you buy only one book today, make sure it is this one!

The personal memoir of the greatest ever Jewish historian

Reuben Ainsztein was a legend in his lifetime. The first historian to argue that Jews did not go to their deaths like lambs to the slaughter. He devoted his life to a study of Jewish Resistance and wrote the seminal work Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe.But his own life story was equally dramatic - and now, some 20 years after his death, his story is told following the remarkable discovery of his lost manuscript in a London attic.Reuben's ambition was simple. He just wanted to leave the antisemitic Poland of his birth and to become British, like his heroes Dickens, Darwin, Livingstone and Conrad. To achieve this goal he crossed Nazi-occupied Europe firstly from East to West and then from North to South until he finally managed to escape via Portugal. His amazing journey is a story of tenacity, single-minded determination, love and heroism.Having reached Britain, he immediately joined the RAF and flew numerous bombing missions until finally being shot down back over the Belgium, from where he had escaped some 3 years earlier.Reuben Ainsztein was a hero amongst men. That so few of us (other than serious historians of the period) have ever heard of him says much about his unassuming ways and modesty. But make no mistake - much of our thinking about the holocaust (including the roles of Roosevelt and Churchill in not doing more to help the victims of the holocaust)would be very different had it not been for the pioneering work of Reuben Ainsztein. Reuben was the first to document Jewish Resistance and probably did more than anyone to encourage Jewish pride and self-belief through highlighting the role of the Jew as fighter rather than as victim.Amnyone interested in this most tragic episode of human history, must read "In Lands Not My Own", the personal memoirs of the greatest historian of the holocaust that ever lived.