A?bout this Series:

American University’s Jewish Studies Program hosts the new series Acts of Remembrance: Shaping Holocaust Memory in the Twenty-First Century during spring semester 2023. Highlighting new books whose authors move back and forth between the present and the past, the series explores Holocaust history and memory from different perspectives. Some, written by survivors, their children, or grandchildren, recount the intertwined narratives of what happened to their families during the Holocaust, how they discovered this history, and how those experiences resonated in their lives. In others, journalists and scholars uncover untold stories of the Holocaust while relating how they came to discover these new narratives.

This speakers’ series complements two American University classes, one on the history of the Holocaust, the other on the history of Nazi Germany.

A?bout this Event:

Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love is the account of a Jewish family from Poland, Morris and Miriam Rabinowitz and their two daughters, Ruth and Toby. The family managed to escape their Nazi ghetto in the summer of 1942 and fled to the Bia?owie?a Forest. With Morris's forestry knowledge, they survived in a small family camp for two years—through brutal winters, typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids on the woods—until they were liberated by the advancing Soviet Army in 1944. Unable to resettle in Poland after the war, the family trekked across the Alps with the help of clandestine guides into Italy where they lived as refugees. After three years, they gave up on their Zionist dream of Palestine and emigrated to the United States where they began a new life, this time as Jewish immigrants in Connecticut. Through meticulous research and years of interviewing of Holocaust survivors, Frankel brings to light not one family’s experience, but that of their surrounding communities as well—in the Rabinowitzes' small Polish town of Zhetel (now Dyatlovo, Belarus), in the Nazi ghetto, in their forest community, and after the war in their DP camp in Italy, and later in the United States.

Rebecca Frankel is the author of the New York Times best-selling book War Dogs: Tales of Canine Heroism, History, and Love, and Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love which was named one of “The Ten Best History Books of 2021” by Smithsonian magazine, and a 2021 National Jewish Book Award Finalist. Rebecca was executive editor of Foreign Policy's print magazine and managing editor of Moment magazine. Her editing work has received multiple accolades including a Polk Award for coverage of the 2015 MSF Hospital bombing in Kunduz, Afghanistan. She’s written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, and has been a guest on Conan, PBS NewsHour, and the Diane Rehm Show, among others. Frankel is a graduate of American University where she received a bachelor's degree in literature 2001.