A Promise of Sweet Tea

We were close enough to these soldiers to see their faces. In them we saw the end of our lives. But, somehow, we still did not give up hope and surrender.

A Jewish community in pre-war Eastern Europe comes alive in this vividly told story of a childhood interrupted by the Holocaust. In his wry and evocative prose, Pinchas Blitt conjures Kortelisy — a humble, vibrant village in the backwoods of western Ukraine. Young Pinchas lives in fear of Cossacks and wolves and the local antisemitic children, but he finds belonging in the rich texts and traditions of his ancestors. When the Soviets invade, Pinchas’s life is infused with new meaning as he innocently devotes himself to the teachings of Comrade Stalin. Then the Nazis arrive, and Pinchas witnesses his beloved village being brutally attacked. As his family seeks safety in the marshes and forests, their precarious existence brings Pinchas face to face with his own mortality and faith, and with a sense of dislocation that will accompany him throughout his life.

“These memoirs are so full of life, of dialogue, of laughter through tears, that they might easily belong in the Yiddish theatre.”
— David G. Roskies, Introduction.