Review: Fighter in the Woods

Fighter in the Woods:The True Story of a Jewish Girl Who Joined the Partisans in World War ll

by Joshua M. Greene

Scholastic Focus, 2025

Category: Middle Grade

Reviewer: Jeanette Brod

 

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The book begins with a dedication to the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. That’s followed by a dramatic vignette of our heroine in the midst of a partisan raid on a pile of Nazi weapons. The reader catches their breath and is then abruptly transported to the beginning of the story in a small town in Poland on June 22, 1941. The date is significant because it marks the beginning of the German attack on the Soviets. We don’t return to the partisan raid until Chapter 16, when the reader is almost at the end of the book.

Fighter in the Woods is the biography of Celia Kassow: how she flees boarding school to rejoin the family, how she joins her family in hiding and in ghettos, how she is hidden in a barn, how she connects with her brothers in the Resistance, and how life returns to a Holocaust survivor after the war. Celia’s adventures are recounted with compassion in dialogue that is balanced by a dispassionate narrative voice. Historical inserts provide context for such subjects as: Antisemitism, Ghettos, Partisans, Collaborators, Righteous Among the Nations, the Camps, Resistance and the Holocaust itself. The historical inserts provide emotional respite from the horrific experiences that Celia and her family face.

The author, Joshua M. Greene, an instructor of Holocaust history, has the difficult job of distilling the story of a large family into a single narrative line. He chooses plot points carefully but tells us in the Author’s Note that there were many more stories left untold. He discusses the importance of historical accuracy in an age of Holocaust denial as well as the necessity of providing engaging text for the young reader. He circumvents the danger of making heroes out of ordinary people and creating an adventure tale out of the ruins of the Jewish lives.

The Author’s Note goes on to enumerate some of the lessons of Holocaust remembrance as framed by conversations with survivors: ”People should know that Jews were not passive…Non-Jews should not think the Holocaust does not concern them…Resistance did not mean only shooting a gun…Young people are never irrelevant.” In other words, it is the responsibility of those who bear witness, all of us, to consider where intolerance, racism and hatred can lead. In a dark moment in history, normal people were thrust into unthinkable circumstances and discovered they had the ability to act. Though most anticipated they would not survive, the partisans chose to fight. Resistance was usually the province of youth. These are empowering messages for young people.

Fighter in the Woods tells a compelling survivor tale. Its strength lies in the way it constructs its story. It would work well as a supplement to Holocaust curriculum and contains many opportunities for reflection and discussion.

 

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Reviewer Jeanette Brod currently works in the Children’s Department at the New Milford, CT, Public Library. She has been the Director of Lifelong Learning at Temple Sholom in New Milford, CT, and the Vice-President of the Children’s Book Council in New York City. Jeanette is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors. She and her husband, Sasha, are the proud parents of two grown children.