As the Second World War and the Nazi assault on Europe ended, some 25,000 Jews, entire families in some instances, walked out of the forests of Eastern Europe. For three years, these men, women and children had miraculously survived, eluding Nazi hunts and Soviet, Polish, and Ukrainian partisans who often killed first and asked questions later. They had escaped from the Nazi ghettos and slave labor camps and formed secret partisan camps in the surrounding forests. The forest not only protected them, it also became their base for sabotage and resistance efforts against the Germans and their allies. Based on extensive research and numerous interviews with survivors, this book tells their harrowing and heroic story. Some may ask the troubling question: why did not more Jews resist? But historian Levine poses a more apt question: how, under the circumstances, was any resistance possible at all?--From publisher description.