The defiant

Shalom Yoran, born Selim Sznycer, was fourteen years old when the Germans occupied Poland in 1939, and he and his family spent the next three years on the run, trying to escape the Nazi mobile killing units. The Defiant is Shalom Yoran's story, a detailed first-person account of his experiences from 1939 to 1945. In the dense forests and vast swamplands, he and his brother banded together with other Jews in Eastern Poland to fight back against the Nazis. They used guns and explosives, and cunning and ingenuity. They joined non-Jewish partisans, and waged behind-the-lines guerrilla warfare against the Germans. They ambushed convoys, attacked garrisons, derailed trains, all the while hardscrabbling for each day's survival.