The life story of Splendora founder Gina Pell's father-in-law Joseph Pell.

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Product Description

Taking Risks: Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

The night the SS rounded up the Jews of his ghetto, 18-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest soon to be engulfed by winter. There he joined a band of pro-Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis and saved hundreds of civilians. After the war, he smuggled contraband from one end of Europe to the other. Then, without money or a formal education and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco. Within a decade, Yosef—now known as Joe Pell—was on his way to becoming one of Northern California’s leading real estate developers.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #948226 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 228 pages

From the Publisher
Copublished with the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, Taking RIsks, related in a a taut and vivid style, is a story of loss and torment but also daring, ingenuity and uncommon resilience. A remarkable account of the largely unhearalded Partisan Movement that was critical to the Soviet war effort to stop the Nazis, Taking Risks is the fascinating story of a modest man who became a remarkable hero. This book will appeal to students of European History, Judaica and World War II. It is a valuable document that will be welcomed in the classroom, the library and on any history bookshelf.

From the Inside Flap
Michael Krasny , host of KQED Forum in San Francisco hails Taking Risks by Joe Pell and Fred Rosenbaum: "Though there are many holocaust memoirs, the stories of those brave men and women who fought back with the partisans is often overshadowed by stories of those who fled or survived the concentration camps. Joseph Pell's story is an especially compelling one not only because of his heroic actions in the face of the Nazi juggurnaut and the rampant and often lethal Ukranian and Polish anti-semitism, but it is an American immigrant success story as well."

About the Author
Joseph Pell grew up in Poland and fought in a partisan unit in Nax\zi-occupied Ukraine. After immigrating to San Francisco he co-founded two ice cream stores and founded Pell Development, a major real estate company.

Fred Rosenbaum is the founding director of Lehrhaus Judaica, the largest school for adult Jewish education in Northern Claifornia. He has taught at several Bay Area universities and is the author of three books on modern Jewish history.

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Customer Reviews

One incredible book
What sets this book apart from all others is that here is a true story of a man who witnessed the holocaust and fought with the underground. In vivid clarity, the author tells his story giving you not only the facts but the thoughts, the emotions and the graphic details that make this a book that cannot be read in spurts - it must be read in one sitting. And it is a story that you'll never, ever forget.

Taking Risks
I read this just after having finished The Kite Runner, which is an extraordinary novel about survival in an imploding society, based on the experiences of the writer. Taking Risks is not a novel. It the true story of one man's survival in impossible conditions. It is modest, extremely frank and utterly gripping.

So much has been written about the Holocaust experience yet this account feels entirely fresh. Towards the end of the book, Mr Pell says he regrets not getting more formal education. But I suspect the almost unnervingly straightforward manner in which the story is told owes much to the author's gift for observation and natural intuition - the intuition that helped him survive in war-ravaged Poland and Germany and excell in his adopted country of America.

Pell, a teenager at the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland evades capture and finds himself in forest, where he joins with other fugitives from the occupation forces. His account of life among the itinerant band of partisans he joins serves as a fascinating insight into how people organise themselves when society has completely broken down. The skills he has developed growing up in a rural community, qualify him very well for the challenges of survival that he faces (far better than the educated urban folk who are also on the run). Through his natural good judgement and his finely developed instincts about human nature he appears to thrive in this fractured world. He doesn't dwell on the tragedy that he has to live with - the loss of all his family - but the sense of his own good fortune is always tempered by that memory. And in a quiet way this resonates throughout the account.

Anyone seeking reassurance about the human spirit and its capacity for survival will find it here. Pell experiences unimaginable horror, yet out of it he builds a successful and fulfilling life. His modesty is present all the way through, and it is to his co-author Fred Rosenbaum's great credit that he persuaded Pell to tell his story. We are all the richer for it.

Life of a man who risked his abilities, and won.
Best of the WWII memiors I've read; perhaps because of the great talent of the ghost writer, but certainly due to the greater story of Pell's life and what he made of it. Exciting and informative, a book that finishes fast and ends too soon.