Jacob's Courage: A Holocaust Love Story

By Charles S. Weinblatt and Charles Weinblatt

In 1939, seventeen-year-old Austrians Jacob Silverman and Rachael Goldberg are bright, talented, and deeply in love. Because they are Jews, their families lose everything: their jobs, possessions,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9657344247
• ISBN13: 9789657344248
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: MAZO PUBLISHERS, Jerusalem, Israel
• Length: 518 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A Powerful Book

Jacob's Courage, by Charles S. Weinblatt, mixes the atrocities of World War II and the holocaust with the hope and courage of a young couple in love. Weinblatt weaves such detail into his story that the reader comes away with a powerful sense of what life was like for the Jews during this horrible period in history. Weinblatt's knowledge of the slums the Jews were initially forced into, then the death camps that followed, is masterful. While the story can be incredibly bleak at times, Weinblatt uses Jacob and Rachael's intense love for each other to lift the mood and give us all something to hope for. Jacob's Courage may be a work of fiction but it shines a spotlight on the truth. Anyone interested in World War II, the Holocaust, Jewish history, or a love story, should pick up Jacob's Courage.

Finding the Courage to Live

Imagine being seventeen years old. The world is before you and anything is possible. You come from a great family and have a wonderful relationship with your dad. Best of all, you are in love for the first time in your life and have been swept completely off your feet. You have met your soul mate and now the most difficult thing for you is to separate yourself from them while you go off to school to study medicine. Life is beautiful and your future is exciting. But life is not beautiful. It is 1939 and you are a Jew in Austria. Your future deteriorates quickly as the Nazis move into Austria and you are forced to move into a Jewish ghetto. Members of your family die one by one, you are shot in the leg and crippled for life, and the love of your life is raped and she becomes pregnant with her attacker's child. How would you maintain your will to live? What would keep you going? Not since I read Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place have the horrors of the Holocaust been brought to life for me in such vivid detail. Charles Weinblatt takes you to Nazi Germany through the lives of Jacob Silverman and Rachel Goldberg, two young people whose world is torn apart at a time in their lives when it should be blossoming. Weinblatt holds your attention as this young couple tries to make sense of what is happening and find a reason to live in spite of the madness that surrounds them. Reading the book had a dual impact on me. There were times when I couldn't put the book down as I read about their escape through a collapsing tunnel. Other times I had to set it down after reading about Jacob's mother dying in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Weinblatt does a masterful job of touching your emotions throughout the book by placing you inside the lives of Jacob and Rachel. The events that took place in this story happened 70 years ago but we should never forget. I recommend you pick up a copy of this book and a box of tissues. Get ready for a good cry and a heart warming ending as Jacob and Rachel find the courage to live. -- Rick Rodgers, CFP®, author of The New Three-Legged Stool: A Tax Efficient Approach to Retirement Planning

Love in Action

As I read `Jacob's Courage", I was struck with how much it reminded me of one of the greatest books of the 20th Century. I can't add any more to the reviews here about how well Weinblatt has painted a picture with words of the horrors of the holocaust. He has done so in a haunting and evocative way. Even though he has done and excellent job of putting the reader in the shoes of Jacob and Rachel, much of their experience during the holocaust has been written before. So what's unique about Weinblatt's book? I'll tell you. In 1956, Viktor Frankl wrote a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" based on his experiences as a Nazi concentration camp inmate. In his book he describes his method of finding a reason to live - to believe in something beyond oneself - that kept him and others alive during a terror, that today, we could hardy imagine. "Jacob's Courage" is a personal, real life example of this method based on real people of Weinblatt's family that validates Frankl's beliefs. In his book, Frankl quotes from the Song of Solomon. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death." (Song of Solomon 8:6) The love that grows between Jacob and Rachel is what sustains them through the horrors of life in a Nazi death camp. They find the power of love - believing in something beyond themselves - their love for each other. We all could learn a lesson from these two teenagers coming of age and faced with the greatest existential threat to life.

A shocking novel of the holocaust

C.S. Weinblatt has written an important novel of a love story set in the horror of the Holocaust. The story takes Jacob and his betrothed Rachel from prewar Austria through the Nazi takeover and the assembly like destruction of the Jews ending in Auschwitz. The story is based on facts, many of them of the most distatesful variety, but should be read by all to see and experience what these innocent people went through. Some of it will make you cry and your skin crawl. Weinblatt has the talent to convey the terror of the Jews. Its not a pretty story but one on the most important stories. I highly reccomend it. James E. Vigiletti, Attorney at Law

And I cried...

Although the characters in Jacob's Courage are fictional, they are based on real people. Weinblatt's characters take the reader on their journey from their pre-war Jewish community to the end of the war. The adversity they faced was real and the experiences they went through were all experiences someone went through. In order to write Jacob's Courage Weinblatt did a considerable amount of research. I rarely read fiction but knew I had to read Jacob's Courage. This book brings the Holocaust to life and evokes emotions not found in many history books. Weaving together a story of love, passion, horror, and history, Weinblatt left nothing out. The book was difficult to read because it openly exposed the brutality and cruelty people were and are capable of. As a mother of a young child, I was especially saddened to read the experiences of families being torn apart at camps. A line was formed that contained the "very old, sick or very young. Children were crying and screaming for their mothers." Those that could not work were sent to this line and were kept there by guards with large barking dogs. This line went straight to the gas chamber. If that had been me, I realized that I would have been forced in one line and my daughter in the other. I cried at the thought and I cried knowing what these people had to go through. Weinblatt made the Holocaust very real and successfully pulled me into his novel. Despite the few overlooked typos mentioned by other reviewers, I am left with a better understanding of this time in history thanks to Weinblatt. He did an amazing job writing a Holocaust history, and Jacob's Courage gives readers the opportunity to analyze examples of intolerance throughout history. Over sixty years later, people are still persecuted for their religious and political differences. Weinblatt asks, "Have we learned nothing from the mistakes of history?"