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

I bump into Joseph Pell once or twice a week in the office building where my law firm rents its space, just down the hall from his Pell Developments office space. We had no idea who he was or what his background was before casually getting to know him. He's a humble, unassuming and good natured man for all he's done and endured, but astute, and up to speed on everything. He'll tell you exactly what he thinks about any topic if you ask him. Even if he senses you're not going to like it.This book is astoundingly good. Not just for the riveting narrative that starts with him as a youth, dashing out to the barn to hide as the SS rounds up every single one of his family and marches them off to be shot then and there. His description of rural, pre-war Poland, growing up as the Kosher butcher's son, in a small-town, Jewish community (side by side with Polish and Ukrainian communities) is rich with detail. A slice of life both multifaceted and compelling, given the reader's knowledge generally of what is coming. He explains the butcher's work and experience that formed him, and he brings to life the family members he lost, flaws and all. Throughout, his vision is unflinching and unfiltered. I suppose it had to be. He describes how families and then individuals had to make choice after choice, where either choice could prove fatal, His success in California seems not all improbable, His surviving WWII as a young Jew in Poland - that was improbable.

Too little is written or known of the Jewish Resistance and post liberation jewish life in eastern Europe. This fascinating take describes in riveting detail that life and the courage and luck it can take to survive and survive well.

True story of a fabulous man.

Amazing and inspiring story of a young man's resourcefulness and will to survive- from fighting the Nazis as a partisan to his arrival and "rags to riches" story in the USA

Well written, amazing story.

Best of the WWII memiors I've read; perhaps because of the great talent of the ghost writer, but certainly due to the greater story of Pell's life and what he made of it. Exciting and informative, a book that finishes fast and ends too soon.

An incredible read. Pell is an immigrant who developed neighborhoods in Marin County, California, north of the Golden Gate Bridge. A lot of the homes in Marin. He came here with nothing from a devastated Europe after the second world war, started with an ice cream store - very inspiring. Worth reading.It taught me you it can be better to start with nothing or to go broke and start over because you have to learn how to do it, and you learn you CAN do it, so you do.

Great book and an amazing story.

Fantastic story! Joe Pell is a man with a story to tell and a knack for telling it.I bought it for the account of his time with the partisans but the whole book has a highly readable quality. His unsentimental descriptions of life in the old country, survival with the partisans, his murky, rather predatory dabblings in the black-market and subsequent new life in the land of opportunity are by turns upsetting, shocking and funny. I read it all the day it arrived and now I'm reading it again.