Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

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On the night the SS rounded up the Jews of his Ukrainian ghetto, eighteen-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest. There he joined a diverse band of pro-Soviet partisans, led by a kind of warlord in the wilderness, who created a forest republic behind enemy lines. With his courageous comrades, Epelbaum disrupted the German war effort for almost a year and a half and saved hundreds of civilans at the same time.

After the liberation. the young survivor became caught up in Europe’s roaring black market. With little money or formal education, an knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco in 1947 and within a year opened an ice cream shop in the city’s outlying, foggy Sunset District. Only a decade later Joe Pell was well on his way to becoming one of the leading real estate developers in Northern California.

Taking Risks, related in a taut and vivid style, is his story–one of loss and torment but also daring, ingenuity, and uncommon resilience.