Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triumph, and Love

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 777 ratings

Price: 17.71

Last update: 02-03-2025


About this item

This program features a bonus chapter of the author's preliminary research interviews with the sisters featured in the book.

"An uplifting tale, suffused with a karmic righteousness that is, at times, exhilarating." —Wall Street Journal

Rebecca Frankel's Into the Forest is a gripping story of love, escape, and survival, from wartime Poland to a wedding in Connecticut.

In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war, they trekked across the Alps into Italy, where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States.

During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him. And to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life.

From a little-known chapter of Holocaust history, one family’s inspiring true story.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press


Top reviews from the United States

  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary book
    Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2024
    This book tells the stories of the Holocaust and those who survived. This is an extraordinary book that is filled with love and heartbreak. This is very vivid and hard at times but an excellent and truthful book.
  • Lynne
    5.0 out of 5 stars Profoundly Impactful Love Story
    Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2024
    I had no expectations when I started to read this book. I have read many books about the Holocaust, and wasn’t sure that I would enjoy this or find it memorable. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

    The author, Rebecca Frankel, recounts a powerful set of facts that reads like a novel. Her attention to detail, her organization of the facts and timeline, and her tone and choice of words used to describe this tale lures the reader deeper and deeper into a page-turner, wherein you want to know what happens next. Yes, most likely you know the history of WWII, but the author adeptly tells it through the perspective of the main characters, the Rabinowitz family.

    Into the Forest tells a captivating story of survival - how the woods protected Morris and Miriam Rabinowitz and their two daughters.

    I will never forget this book and the Rabinowitz’s tale - from before the war, during and afterwards. This family has made a huge contribution to humanity, and I’m so glad that Rebecca Frankel took the time to research, document and share their story. This would make a powerful movie. I plan to gift this book to several people. I highly recommend this book.
  • Nighthawk779
    4.0 out of 5 stars Personal account of experiences
    Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2021
    Easy to read good writing. The story is interesting and flowing. Sometimes storys are missing a beginning or the ending but you learn as much as possible about their story. Featured on PBS book recommendations on nightly news.
  • Cassie
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read
    Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2024
    Very through story of a remarkable Jewish family who survived the Holocaust in the woods of Poland and Belarus. Well written.
  • pattypoo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Excellent true story
    Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2024
    I don't have much time to read these days, however, this book was Excellent. Very interesting and sad, but eventually happy story. thanks for writing it Rebecca.
  • Robert B. Lamm
    3.0 out of 5 stars Another Profound Holocaust Saga, but Not Well Executed
    Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2021
    I have read so many books about the Holocaust, but I never tire of it. The brutality and horror never cease to grab me, and the stories of survival are nothing less than awesome (despite it being the world’s most overused word).

    And yet.

    There were a few reasons why I wasn’t wild about this one. First, there were so many names that I gave up pretty early trying to figure out who everybody was. The author seems to be acquainted and familiar with them, but the reader is not. A list of them would have been immeasurably helpful. Second, publicity about the book, including on its flyleaf, pumps up the importance to the book of a chance encounter that ultimately led to the author becoming acquainted with the family whose saga she describes. But the encounter takes place within the first pages of the book and we don’t find out its consequences until close to the end, by which time we’ve forgotten why we’re supposed to be intrigued by it.

    A noble effort, but perhaps the author was too close to the subjects to write a better book.
  • Mom in NH
    5.0 out of 5 stars Expertly written account of a heroic survival story
    Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2023
    Frankel brings alive the incredible (and awful) survival story of the Rabinowitz family. While having read a number of WWII and Holocaust history books, I was not familiar with the story of the Eastern European Jews who survived World War II and the Nazi's Final Solution by hiding in the forest. While the story she shares is beyond compelling, Frankel's writing and storytelling ability is what really stood out to me. What could have been a straight-forward account of a historical event, turned out to be a non-fiction book that read like a page-turning novel. Must read!
  • Mel B
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tears Past and Present
    Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2022
    What an amazing book. This is a book I think someone 16 and up should read. It is a time in history that we should never forget. It was odd that I chose to read this book right before Putin sent the invasion into Ukraine and made this book even more important to me. The sadness and pain those people suffered then during the Holocaust and now makes me weep.

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