Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resist… (2024)

There is nothing as compelling as a real-life story - whether it's a love story, a war story or a personal journey through an unimaginable horror. Jack and Rochelle is all three of these stories, melded and meshed together into an unforgettable story of the terrible things that human beings can do to each other and the power of love and determination.

Told simply, in a conversational format and alternating between Jack and Rochelle, it is a story that I found completely and utterly riveting from the beginning until the end. Starting with the story of Jack and Rochelle's parents, they talk about their childhoods and teenage years, how they knew each other and the way their lives changed with the beginning of the war.

As they meet again in the forest after escaping from the Nazis and living as partisans in underground bunkers, their story goes from a sweet narrative about growing up to a nightmare where they are forced to endure terrible conditions as they fight to survive against the Germans and the harsh Polish weather.

I've read several non-fiction accounts of World War II, but this is the first partisan account that I've read, and it was really quite shocking to read about the realities of living every day in a cramped bunker, with death an ever-present possibility. But amid the horrors that they are forced to endure, there is also a gradual love that emerges between the two of them, and in their telling of the story their continued love really shines through.

Written by Jack and Rochelle, and edited by their son, Lawrence, the book is obviously a labour of love, and despite the terrible things that have happened to them in their lives, it really reflects their love for each other and how very grateful they are to have each other.

Read more of my reviews at The Aussie Zombie

Beautiful and heartbreaking memoir of love and survival in horrendous circ*mstances.

This book will make you open your well-stocked pantry and freezer doors and stand there in awe at all the choices you have, knowing that some people survived for months and months on nothing more than flour and water. This is an eye-opening and beautiful story about love and survival. I was familiar, of course, with life in the concentration camps, but not with the partisan groups who escaped to the wilderness and managed to survive in the freezing cold and parasite-ridden summers for years. Amazing story.

Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance is a powerful two-person captivity, escape, and resistance narrative of two teenagers on the run who fell in love during World War II. For these middle-class, Polish Jews caught in eastern Poland during the Red Army's onslaught in 1939, then again during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the world came to an end.

Jack and Rochelle found themselves in an hostile world--surrounded, hunted, and betrayed by three deadly enemies: Polish police who assisted the Red Army to disenfranchise Jewish homes and businesses and who later helped the SS to wipe out Poland's Jews systematically; bands of Russian partisans who considered Jews the enemy every bit as much as the Nazis; and the Nazi exterminators themselves. Soon after the SS arrived, Jews were collected and concentrated into ghettos where even minor offenses brought immediate execution. They created the Judenrat, an advisory committee of prominent Jewish leaders who carried out the SS orders quickly and efficiently. As a result, in the early days of the Nazi occupation, many leading Jewish citizens were executed hastily and secretly outside their homes. Jack's family, with the exception of his father Julius, was caught and murdered; Rochelle lost everyone except for an uncle. Jack and Rochelle came to the conclusion that they had to escape--Jack because he sought revenge against his tormentors; Rochelle because she refused to die like a lamb.

The book is a unique love story about two people who developed an inseparable human relationship amid the horrors of war; between the lines, there is a powerful lesson in the sanctity of life itself. Wartime, as Jack and Rochelle explain, is never the best time to form meaningful or long-lasting relationships. Any sense of future is stymied by the realities of the present. Deep feelings give way to fear and uncertainty; thoughts of establishing lasting partnerships give way to enjoying only the pleasures offered by the moment.

The narrators recall their experiences together, and readers get the feeling that they are sitting down in the Sutin living room for an extended conversation with two very honest people. Nearly every chapter features Jack and Rochelle Sutin trading interpretations of events, as they discuss not only what happened to them, but also why they did what they did. Essentially, there are three voices at work in this narrative: Jack's, Rochelle's, and a joint historical voice that synthesizes both into a third as they find their common ground together.

Being able to leap through a world of wartime frustration and uncertainty to a world of profound human commitment and hope makes this book different and refreshing. It provides some light of humanity for one of the darkest of human experiences.

Jack and Rochelle told their story of the Holocaust. Rochelle was put to work in a camp, and while she was working, her mother and sister where killed. She determined to escape, and would rather be shoot in the back trying to get away, than staying, and being killed. She escaped to the Forrest, with a few other prisoners. The book tells of the the years she and Jack spent in the woods, and how they met and fell in love.

Synopsis:

Jack and Rochelle Sutin tell their survival story, taking turns recounting all that they endured as Polish Jews during the Holocaust. They start with a brief account of their family and their lives before the war. Mere acquaintances before the Nazi occupation, the two met again after escaping the ghettos, hiding with other Jewish partisans in the Belorussian forest called Naliboki.

Review:

In December of last year, I read Nechama Tec’s book Defiance, about the Bielski partisans, who took in Jewish ghetto refugees and fought the Germans. The Bielski otriad (partisan group) was in the Naliboki forest, as were Jack and Rochelle, who joined a different otriad. The stories told in Defiance were incredible, and I was glad to return to the subject and read another story of the same place and time.

Jack and Rochelle is written with some passages by Rochelle and others by Jack. They take turns, sometimes interjecting a sentence in the other’s narrative. In his preface, Lawrence Sutin says:

"My parents chose to speak openly of their experiences to us – to my sister Cecilia and myself. I cannot remember at what age I first began to hear their Holocaust stories."

So it seems fitting that it is written as if they are telling the stories to us, the reader.

Jack and Rochelle are very candid and seem to hold very little back from the reader. For instance, they openly admit that Rochelle did not trust Jack for a while after they met again in the forest. He wanted to take care of her, but she thought he just wanted her for sex. Considering Rochelle and her friend Tanya’s previous experiences with Soviet partisans, her distrust is understandable.

Although I knew of course that Jack and Rochelle survived the Holocaust and made it to America, that did not prevent me from feeling the intensity of their ordeals. Consider a few quotes from the book:

"We didn’t expect to live that long. We just decided that we didn’t want to be killed the way the Nazis planned – slowly, as it suited their purposes, and after we had worked ourselves to near death. We could die with some dignity. We would try to get away, they would shoot us with their machine guns, and that would be it." (p. 73)

"Then we realized that these two Germans thought we were Russian partisans. So we explained the truth to them. We told them what the Germans had done to our families. When they heard that their faces turned white and they started to tremble." (p. 141)

For the most part, Jack and Rochelle are in agreement over the events that they jointly experienced. However, Rochelle would mention several times how she worked to keep Jack from going out on the most dangerous partisan raids. Jack was always quick to follow with a statement that: though she may have kept him from some raids, most of the time he did fight with the rest of the Zorin otriad fighters. As a result, I wasn’t sure how much Jack went out on raids.

I definitely appreciate that Jack and Rochelle did not stop their story when the Germans were ousted from Poland in 1944. By continuing on, the book covered an aspect of the Holocaust experience of which I knew few details: what happened to the Jews immediately after their liberation from the Nazis.

For indeed, Jack and Rochelle’s troubles did not disappear with the defeat of the Nazis. When they returned to their hometowns, the couple found that the majority of their Polish neighbors hated them and wished they had not survived. The Soviets were conscripting the partisan fighters to their army, to fight and likely die on the front. Jack and Rochelle wanted to live and start a family, so they fled west.

After many, many trials and hardships, the couple and their daughter finally ended up in St. Paul, Minnesota. They were interviewed for a local paper and a story was published about them in 1949. I was horrified to read that Jack and Rochelle subsequently received anonymous letters and phone calls “complaining about dirty Jews being let into America when there wasn’t enough to go around for real Americans.”

The afterword by Lawrence Sutin is essential reading after completing Jack and Rochelle’s story. He has some keen insights about his parents, their stories, and his own experience of being the child of two Holocaust survivors.

"Here, of course, lies the value of Holocaust narratives told by the survivors themselves. These narratives confirm that, within the maelstrom of death, the lives lost or spared were individual lives that cannot be encompassed by the horrific statistic of “six million.”" (p. 206)

When we think about the Holocaust, we remember the atrocities perpetuated on the Jews of Europe by the Nazis, the concentration camps, the death camps, the showers of poisonous gas, the digging of their own graves, and the starvation and mass murder of an entire people. But this isn't a memoir of the same types of experiences. Instead Jack and Rochelle were Jews from different towns in eastern Poland, who had each led a fairly comfortable life before the onset of World War II. That said, the Polish people at the time were fairly anti-Semitic, and each family had to deal with racist comments and actions directed toward them.

After the Soviets, who had taken over eastern Poland, had been driven out by the Nazis, the Jews in Poland were forced into ghettos. Rochelle was spared the liquidation of her ghetto because she was away from the ghetto doing hard labor for the Nazis, while Jack and his father had hidden themselves away before their ghetto was liquidated. Rochelle's father and Jack's mother had already been murdered by the Nazis, and anyone left behind in the ghettos met the same fate. It was then that both Rochelle and Jack, with his father Julian, escaped into the woods of eastern Poland, where they lived for two years, subsisting on not much more than flour and water for much of it, and enduring infestations of lice and bedbugs and other vermin while living either in underground bunkers or in makeshift shelters.

It's incredible to me how Rochelle, Jack, and Julian were able to survive such primitive conditions, always on the run and fearing attacks from the Nazis or the Soviets, or being informed on by the native Polish. And it's a testament to their strong love that it managed to save Rochelle from utter despair after she realized she was the only surviving member of her family. It took time, but eventually she and Jack decided to continue to fight and to live for one another.

Lawrence Sutin, the son of Jack and Rochelle, who edited this work, does bring up a good point that is worth discussing. It's not unusual to hear someone wonder why some people died during the Holocaust while others died, that possibly some were stronger either mentally or physically, or some managed to escape because they had friends in high places, or any number of reasons. But to suggest that some survived due to their strength is falling into the trap that there was some idea of natural selection going on. In reality, some survived while others died, and it was all due to dumb luck, and nothing more. Had the Americans liberated Bergen-Belsen just two weeks earlier, Anne Frank would still have been alive.

This is definitely worth a read as another Holocaust survival story, one that might not be as well-known as other stories. Though the writing is rather simplistic (it feels as though Mr Sutin simply transcribed oral interviews with his parents), it is engaging and fast-paced. Highly recommended.

I read this book for my reading classes. It's a holocaust story, and it's amazing what this couple went through to survive -- and thankfully it has a happy ending! The students in my reading classes love it because it's a love story, it's nonfiction, and there are some gritty details that we could all identify with.

This powerful book of the Jewish resistance in Poland is one of the most inspirational books of survival and will power -- plus, the story of love which endures. The descriptions of living under ground, the woods, the swamp,etc. are so vivid! I learned a lot about the psychology of people in close quarters under constant stress and what people have to do to survive.

This book, Jack and Rochelle - A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance, was downloaded and on my “To Read” list for three years. I finally took the time to read it and what a gem it proved to be. It was like sitting down with your grandparents at the kitchen table and listening as they took turns telling you stories of how the Nazis invaded their homes and destroyed their lives. In my mind they sat at that table holding hands, occasionally wiping a tear, swearing when the passion of memory tore at their hearts again. They were two young people who, I believe, were providentially brought together in the middle of a forest while running and hiding for their lives. Committed to the resistance effort, they wanted to live, and the horrors of their existence will boggle your mind. But, they also were willing to die rather than submit or surrender to tyranny.
The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Rochelle and Jack, and are woven together so well as to seem to be one person speaking. This true account of how their lives were forever changed sheds more light on a dark, painful era of history that we should never forget.

devastating first hand accounts of polish jews, jack and rochelle, escaping from jewish ghettos and fighting nazis, polish police, and russian military groups during the holocaust years.

An intense story on the love between two individuals during the most difficult times in world history. Their experiences were of one I had never read about before, and it was so interesting.

Aside from being a beautifully wonderful account of a Holocaust love story, this is now one of my personal favorite books and that's saying a lot. One finds themselves literally cheering this pair on through their triumphs and short-comings. My heart goes out to Jack and Rochelle for everything they've been through.

I've read enough of the horrors of Holocaust survivors from the concentration camps, but this story is different. I learned a lot I did not know. These Polish Jews hid out in the woods with partisan groups for the duration of the war. They should have died or been killed numerous times. This couple met during their time in the woods and stayed together for a lifetime. The story is told in an alternating fashion, just as the couple would speak their stories, adding bits and pieces to each other's accounts.

There is some mature content but it is not graphic.

I have spent a lifetime reading accounts of the Holocaust. This is a unique memoir since it is a joint recollection of a husband and wife telling their unique narrative of their personal and partnered lives as they fought for survival as Jewish partisans in World War 2 Poland. Their personal accounts captured the deep intensity of emotions of Jews fighting unimaginable horrors at the time -- the fear, the anger, the sense of profound loss, and a deep appreciation for having survived, all seen through a deep abiding love that Jack and Rochelle Sutin had for each other which brought focus to their quest to survive. This book more than most really captures how victims of the Holocaust especially could almost lose their sense of humanity in the face of unspeakable tragedy -- an experience common to so many in the Holocaust, yet so. movingly recounted in this book. This book has made me consider anew the lives of partisans as they struggled against the Nazis who overran their country, destroyed their homes and families, and viciously ripped away their sense of self. This book has offered me an additional lens through which to view this aspect of Holocaust history, and because of this, it has been a deeply rewarding and meaningful read.

Less than inspiring - starts off well enough, but in the end they dress him as a woman so he doesn't have to fight anymore. I lost all respect for them at that point. Especially as they describe the other women sending their men off to fight, not knowing if they would return. Seemed pretty selfish to me.

A touching account of resistance, fate and true love (just to name a few) that made me cry often but mostly made me feel thankful for the very basic things I have (food, roof, family, etc..) I liked how the story allowed for both jack and Rochelle to each tell their own side and version. Finally i am glad I finally read it after searching for it for so long!

this was an amazing story - and a great Twin Cities connection that I didn't realize going in. What a love story set amidst really unfathomable conditions.

3.5 stars. A really great first person account of terrible events.

This book is not only a holocaust survival tale, but this is also a story of how even through the most terrible of moments in history there can be love and companionship found. The book starts with Jack and Rochelle telling of their experience growing up in the mainly anti-semitic country of Poland. Then it goes into their experience when World War II started and how things changed for them when the Russians, then Germans, invaded. When the Germans force them into Jewish Ghettos and the couple retells their experience and tragedies they experienced there. Both Jack and Rochelle were able to escape the ghettos before ever knowing or experiencing the concentration camps, making this story already different than others I have read. They then tell about how they survived in the forests in Poland, and how they came to meet up and form a strong relationship over about three years. After Poland was liberated by the Russians, Jack and Rochelle decided to head west in hopes of having a more free life. In conclusion, they moved to America and have since lived there, with their family.
The beginning of the book where the background of the two was being described was a pretty slow read, but then when it started to get into the troubles and hardships they had to endure it became easy to read a chapter in the blink of an eye. The environment and people were described so well I truly felt as though I was experiencing this myself. I was able to feel all the emotions either Jack or Rochelle would feel and found myself tearing up a few times. It has helped to expand my view on how polish jews had to endure the effects of the holocaust, and how they would retaliate.
If you are looking for a perspective of the Jewish partisans during World War II and how people who weren't sent to the concentration camps survived, this is a good read for you. It is an emotional, compelling, and powerful read; one that would be great for anyone trying to learn more about the holocaust or the endurance of love.

I am wondering why this does not win a Pulitzer Prize and why Honorary Ph.D.s are not awarded to all members of this family.

This is so far beyond 5 stars. As a Catholic, I have often wondered where Jewish stamina and positive outlook came from. Thus I have read a huge amount of Holocaust books. I only read one other book that I labeled 5 stars because it gave me more than a glimpse of fortitude, stamina, strength, resistance, forward thinking information.

This book is over-the-top fantastic and is extremely well documented, explained and causes the reader to fall in love with all of the true characters! Outstanding reporting, reader understandable characters, events, thoughtfulness and diligent work by the writer.

READ THIS BOOK! Or, philosophize and scratch your balls! If you read it, you will understand the previous sentence.

What a lovely family, generation to generation understanding, thoughtfulness and such a brilliant way of bringing comprehension to those that don't know, are curious and those that strive for education!!

Thank you for such a wonderful and understandable book! I even learned what the "resistance" was all about, even though other books that suggested resistance were very shallow. I have wondered, in my easy life, what I would/should do if ever caught in the same hell as the Holocaust!

And a Catholic's love to all Jewish peoples! Thank you for bringing me into your world, if only for a read and a moment.

Bravo, Bravo, BRAVO!!!!

The book Jack and Rochelle, written by Jack Sutin, conveys a strong story of the Holocaust from a unique perspective. The book is a memoir edited by Jack Sutin, the son of Jack and Rochelle, from his parents personal experiences. At the beginning of the book, Rochelle faces many challenges from Polish people. Although I knew a little about the life of Jewish people before the Holocause began, it was interesting to see the lengths Rochelle's father went to make her life a little better. Also, it was difficult to hear how she got treated just for her religion. Another part I found impactful was the story of love in the book. Jack thought he would never see Rochelle again, however he was able to persevere through his struggles and eventually reconnected with her. I think the deeper meaning is that if it is really true love, a person should go to any extent to get it. Another key part of the book is both Jack and Rochelle's opposing viewpoints as they move into the forest. Jack is optimistic and wants to have a better life outside of his town. However, Rochelle wants to get out of the ghetto and die because she doesn’t see a reason to live. The bigger picture is to always have a positive outlook on life no matter how bleak it may seem. The story of Jack and Rochelle is by far one of the most compelling Holocaust stories I’ve read. It conveys many important life skills that can help someone fight through any difficulty in their life. Personally, I think it is definitely worth taking time to read and fully understand the messages it holds.

I kind of picked this book because it’s probably the closest I’ll come to seeing my name in a book. Which was cool, but made, but it’s also a little weird to read about all of those awful things happening to “you.”
I did really enjoy this book...if you can say that you enjoyed a true story about a Jewish couple during WWII. It was interesting to read a first hand account about what it was like to be in one of the partisan groups. The things that they lived through were horrific and very eye opening. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I feel like it is SO important to continue to hear the stories of the past, whether it’s WWII or slaves.
I did really like how this book was written. Jack and Rochelle’s son took down their story as they told it, so it felt like I was really listening to them.
I would rate this book at an R. Things weren’t written in a lustful way, but horrific things happened.

This is a very good book. The reading style is very easy to read. The content is very heavy and hard, but I think it is good to know what happened, even though what they went through was so awful. I really was not aware of all the persecution of the Jews by the Polish, even before the Nazis invaded. I appreciate Jack and Rochelle being willing to tell their story, though I also understand those who did not want to talk about their experiences because they were so horrible. It is so hard to imagine the way they had to live, constantly knowing they could be killed at any time. They were very creative I think what makes it easier to read is knowing that they did survive and also because it is a beautiful (and unique) love story. I think there was someone looking out for them, perhaps an angel. I am so sorry they had to suffer so much but glad they were able to enjoy many years of life together in safety in the USA.

4+ stars. I never tire of learning more about the far-reaching and devastating effects of WWII. In this biography about a Jewish couple who survived the Holocaust in Poland, Jack and Rochelle escaped the Nazis (and Russians) to hide in the forest for the remainder of the war, functioning as "partisans" and working to thwart the efforts of the Nazis. Understandably, there were many aspects which were hard to read and I had to take a break sometimes. I'm glad I read this book of survival, with a relevant reminder of the dangers of hatred. I also appreciated the forward and afterward written by Lawrence, Jack and Rochelle's son. He offered an interesting point of view as a child of parents who survived the unimaginable and talked openly about the horror to their two children.

This was such a good book. I've read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about WWII and the Holocaust, but I've never read much about partisan fighting groups, much less a real-life romance in the midst of that. The love that these two had for each other is inspiring! In a marriage, you always have to do some things for the other person when you don't feel like it, but I think most people haven't had to clean open sores on each other's body, or pick fleas and lice off of each other, much less beg for food or empty each other's latrine bucket. If you think your marriage has had challenges (and all of them have), this book puts it into perspective up to a point. What a life they lived.

It is really hard to wrap your mind around the cruelties done to human beings during the Holocaust. As many stories as I read about the experiences of those who survived the Holocaust, it will never make sense and it is so frightening to me to realize that this all happened such a short time ago, while my grandparents were in their 20's (or close to that age). This story of one couple's survival was so incredible. I can see where God was really at work in keeping them safe, through dreams, promptings and those he put in their paths. It was just mind-blowing the things that some had to do to survive, to continue living. It is a great reminder of how precious life is.

It is the account of Jack and Rochelle before, during and after the Russian and Nazi invasions of Poland.

Their son writes their words. Sometimes Jack will finish Rochelle's words or she finishes his. It also tells their different takes on the times they lived through.

People who don't believe the Jewish history before, during and even after WW II will never change their opinions but the rest of us need to read these types of accounts so we can prevent the same thing happening again to any group of people based on religion, race or creed.

In February 2019, Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that "Poles imbibed anti-semetism with thier mother's milk." While politically insenstive and crude, this book shows that statement was for the most part more true than not. While Jack and Rochelle found some sympathetic Poles, for the most part they encountered hate and collaboration with the Nazis. This is a chilling account of the incredible hardships and dangers endured by this couple, as told in the first person.

This is a biography written by Jack and Rochelle's son. The author thought it was important for him to write about his parents survival of WWII and eventual move from Poland to Minneapolis, MN. They were Jews who met before the Russian invasion of Poland, then the invasion by the German Nazis and then the Russians again after WWII. They survived by living in the forests of eastern Poland. The author wanted to understand how and why they were Holocaust Survivors.