A Life Reclaimed: A Child Among Partisans

A Life Reclaimed is the story of Lithuanian-Jewish child Luba Olenski. Whilst visiting relatives in Bialystok in 1941, ten-year-old Luba was interned in the Bialystok ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, Luba jumped from a moving train to the death-camps and survived alone in the Polish countryside for five weeks before being rescued by Jewish partisans, the Olenski brothers - the eldest of whom, Duvche, she would later marry and form a new family.

A Life Reclaimed is a comprehensive account of the author’s experiences in which everyday life with the forest partisans is recounted in rich detail.

It was written and published as part of the Makor Jewish Community Library’s “Write Your Story” program under the editorial assistance of Julie Meadows.