Carlton Jackson

I'm not going to call this the greatest-written biography I ever read, but the subject is one of the most fascinating non-famous people I've ever encountered. Such were the events in his life that I would doubt his story, except he didn't call attention to himself -- the biographer approached HIM after reading a few lines about him in a local "facts about our local citizens" type human interest story.

Although this book bills itself as a Holocaust story ("Hero of the Minsk Ghetto" and the Star of David on the cover) and there is a large part about Joseph's Holocaust experiences, there's also the war story, and the mountaineering story, and USSR oppression story, and the immigration to America story. By the age of 13, Joseph had:

* Helped about 200 Jews, including his mother and baby brother, escape from the Minsk Ghetto
* Fought bravely as a Belarusian partisan and was decorated
* Traveled from Minsk to St. Petersburg to Moscow to Kiev etc., alone and without resources
* Enrolled in a prestigious Russian Naval Academy on the strength of his Army record, concealing the fact that he had had no schooling and was completely illiterate

In his mid-teens and on into adulthood, he:

* Finally finished high school
* Became an expert photo restorer
* Became a top-qualified mountaineer and climbing instructor (something that was really important in the USSR at the time; they were requiring mountaineer training of all their young men)
* Became the featherweight wrestling champion for the Belarusian SSR, and might have taken Moscow if he'd kept competing
* Got a doctorate at the Institute of Physiology at the Academy of Science of Belarus
* Taught and researched at the Minsk Polytechnic Institute (now called the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics, I think)
* Married and had two children

He could, alas, go no further: awesome as he was, Joseph's Jewish background made for an unbreakable glass ceiling. By 1978, in fact, he was unemployed, broke and with no future for himself or his two sons, simply because of their Jewishness. Not to be undone, the now middle-aged man packed up his entire family -- wife, sons, sons' wives, the dog, and a grandchild born en route -- and started over again in the USA. Following that he:

* Created a profitable home construction business
* Ran a successful Louisville, Kentucky restaurant
* Became an American citizen

The man was truly a superhero.

Joseph Gavi died in 2002, a few years after this biography was published. As I said, the writing itself isn't terrific, and the printing is bad -- the text keeps fading in and out, getting gray and then black again seemingly at random, which isn't the author's fault but which is kind of annoying. But the STORY is incredible. Not just for Holocaust buffs here.… (altro)