I have read many books about World War II and about the Holocaust. I didn’t know much about the Jewish Resistance and Brzezinski does a great job bringing these people to life. I learned so much from this book. It really opened my eyes on just how many were involved with the resistance and what they sacrificed.

This book is so hard to listen to, listen to what these people lived through. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that the Holocaust even happened. That there were people out there who would do this to other people. I enjoyed this book so much I might get the printed copy, sit down in a quiet corner and spend time with them again.

This is a book that anyone who is interested in this time period should read. I don’t read many books a second time but I might with this time so I can give these brave souls more of my time and respect. This book reads like fiction but unfortunately the characters are real people who had to live through the horrors of the War and what the Nazis did to them. Good on them for standing up for what was rightfully theirs. Their freedom and their lives.
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"One of the bravest scenes Edelman witnessed during the war was the sight of a man entering the Warsaw transit station for the transports to Auschwitz with his son on his shoulders. The boy was frightened and asking where they were going. "Not far", the father reassured him. "Soon it will all be over".

This is the last line of this amazing book detailing the armed Jewish underground in Warsaw.

The author interviewed many of the survivors and his book details the build up to the Ghetto revolt of 1943 as well as Jewish participation in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

Lesser known aspects are also detailed such as the conflict between some of the right wing fascist elements within the non-Jewish Polish resistance army and the Jewish units.

I'd highly recommend this for an understanding of the Jewish underground and particularly the internal conflicts within the Jewish resistance itself. ( )

Kirkus said Isaac's Army is "as moving and powerful as any novel." It's about the Jewish element of the Polish resistance over the course of the entire war (most books focus on the few months of the Ghetto Uprising). It includes the events of the 1939 invasion, Holocaust, Ghetto Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, and story behind the mass Exodus to Israel after the war. Seeing it from this perspective - normal citizens at the start and end - makes it more real. The focus is around a small group of rebellious teenagers who decided to fight back, 95% of whom never survived the war. This is the story of the few who somehow survived nearly 6 long years in Nazi occupied Poland.

The narrative follows an arc of continuously mounting brutality, when things can't get any worse, it gets worse, reaching a crescendo of violence even the Nazi's were sickened by. Warsaw in the end saw destruction more complete than Hiroshima or Nagasaki, no other major city in WWII was more completely destroyed. This is my third book about Warsaw (The Pianist, Jacob the Liar) and the more I read about the resistance movements, Jewish and Gentile, the more I want to learn. It's one of the most interesting stories of WWII since it involved the largest underground resistance movement for the longest period of time, from 1939-1945, the entire war, with people from all over the political and racial spectrum creating a variety of conflict and alliance. The Jewish element was quite small and militarily inconsequential, but had huge consequence politically due to the Ghetto Uprising, in the establishment of Israel and the story of the Holocaust and Jewish prestige. Really just an amazing book, it starts off slow but picks up to high speed by page 200 with the establishment of the Ghetto walls not letting go through to the end. It's a humane account, the last sentence is devastatingly beautiful. ( )