Malka was nearly three when the German invaders forced her family into the Jewish ghetto in Volodymyr-Volynski, a city that was in Poland and is today in Ukraine. Of the 25,000 Jews in the city in 1939, only thirty would survive. Malka's father was shot in the first pogrom, but before he died he begged her mother Rivka to 'save the children'.
Rivka kept Malka and her two older brothers alive through eighteen terrifying months in the ghetto. In the midst of the inhumanity, a few people risked their lives to help. A Wehrmacht officer saved them from being shot, and a Polish dressmaker gave them sanctuary when the SS went hunting for victims.
Then Rivka implored Mr and Mrs Yakimchuk, a Ukrainian farmer and his saintly wife, to hide her and the children. The Yakimchuks agreed, and kept to their word even after the SS commandeered the farm. They dug a pit under their barn, and there Malka's family stayed through the freezing winter and into the summer until the Red Army came. At the end of the year, Rivka was forced to draw on her strength yet again, as she set out to create a new life for her and her children.
A Mother's Courage is Malka's powerful and moving tribute to a determined and resourceful woman and all those who opened their hearts to her and her family.