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Paperback; 320 pages with photos.
 
This story is one that our author grew up hearing, and learning from his mother, Fela. More than a story, this is a revelation of faith and survival during a time when life itself was questionable every day.
   At one point in the beginning of the war, Fela and her brother Kuba, were living in the Polish town of Gostynin, fled Poland on foot, evaded the Nazis, were arrested trying to enter the Soviet Union, and were imprisoned. At the same time, Fela’s husband, Joska, was in a Russian POW Camp. Fela found herself on a remote island in Siberia where for years she worked as free labor. One winter she fell through some ice and her legs froze solid. Rescued by comrades, she developed gangrene and surgery was scheduled to amputate both legs. She fought hard refusing the operation. Overnight, the blood in her legs miraculously began to flow and she recovered.
   Fela and Joska were ultimately released from their respective imprisonments, found their way back to the village in Kazakhstan, where they were married. Fela then suffered two bouts of typhus and a tapeworm that depleted her remaining strength. Even so, in this condition she bore two healthy sons.
   All of this, and more, happened before Fela turned 28. The tale author Henry Michalski’s parents, through faith and strength of character, soars above the accounts of the depravity and cruelty they suffered.
   “Torn Lilacs” opens with a quotation by Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, “A Jew who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.”