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A
Match Made in Hell
The Jewish Boy and the
Polish Outlaw Who Defied the Nazis
Larry Stillman
From the testimony of Morris Goldner
"From the first line, this Holocaust memoir grips you with
its searing action. . . . A riveting first-person narrative.
. . . Discussion groups will want this one."—Booklist
A Match Made in Hell is the award-winning memoir of shy Jewish teenager
Moniek (Morris) Goldner joining forces with hardened Polish criminal
Jan Kopec to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland. First trained as
Kopek's accomplice in robberies and black market activities,
the orphaned Goldner eventually becomes an accomplished saboteur
of the Nazi war effort for local partisan groups. Through it
all, Goldner and Kopec forge a remarkable friendship and co-dependency
born of need and desperation in a hellish time and place.
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Larry Stillman (left) is a writer living in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Morris Goldner (right) now lives in Chicago and is retired
from the garment trade.
Find out more about the author's appearances
at www.larrystillman.com
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Description from the cloth edition:
When Moniek (Morris) Goldner and
his family were uprooted from their Polish farming village during
a German aktion, the child-sized sixteen-year-old fled
into the forests. He eventually met up with his father, who had
also escaped, and together they managed to survive until a former
friend betrayed the pair. Wounded and left for dead beneath his
father's murdered body, Goldner was rescued by the enigmatic
outlaw Jan Kopec, who was also in hiding, looking for ways to
profit from his criminal expertise.
For eighteen months Kopec hid the boy with him, moving from one
area to another, often staying in hideouts he had fashioned years
earlier. At first Kopec trained Goldner simply to serve as his
accomplice in robberies and black market activities. But before
long he pushed the training to a whole new level, making it possible
for him to sell Goldner's services to a shadowy resistance group
which was becoming interested in the daring young saboteur.
And through it all, these two disparate personalities—the
quiet, small-framed boy and the stocky, callous mercenary—forged
an remarkable friendship and codependency born of need and desperation
in a hellish time and place.
Reviews
"One of the most thrilling reads I've come upon in years.
It's simply written, even when dealing with such complex issues
as the political underground in wartime Poland, and such difficult
subjects as the ethics of war. . . . Adults and teenagers alike
will go for it. It's a winner."–Felice Picano, author
of The Lure and Onyx
"A Match Made in Hell is a
bold, honest account of an ordinary young man thrust into extraordinary
circumstances."–Tzivia Gover, author of Mindful
Moments for Stressful Days
"'I can remember crawling out from beneath my father's
lifeless body.' From the first line, this Holocaust memoir grips
you with its searing action. At the same time, it raises crucial
moral issues. In 1943, in southern Poland, Morris Goldner, 16,
was rescued by Jan Kopec, a notorious criminal who trained the
small, quiet Jewish kid as a ruthless accomplice in armed robberies
and sold the boy's services to the partisans. Now Goldner lives
in Chicago, haunted forever by what he saw and what he did. Stillman
allows the survivor to tell his story in a riveting first-person
narrative. On the one hand, it reads like a fast-paced Bonnie-and-Clyde
outlaw adventure. But there's absolutely no romanticism either
about the Holocaust horror the boy witnesses (including the roundup
and massacre of his own family) or about his own role as robber,
saboteur, and killer. The outlaw brutalizes the boy; did the
boy humanize Kopec? When is killing justified? Discussion groups
will want this one. –Booklist Reviews , November
1, 2003, Copyright 2003
For information about other UW Press books
of related interest, see our page at Jewish
studies/Judaica titles
For more information contact
our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
For media and reviewers a press kit
for A Match Made in Hell
is available:
Editor's statement | Reviews
| Author's
photo | Author's
bio | Cover
image
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First paperback
edition
August 2005
LC: 2003005677 DS
264 pp. 6 x 9
ISBN 0-299-19394-2 Paper $19.95 t
Cloth edition published Sept. 2003
ISBN 0-299-19390-X Cloth $29.95 t
Wisconsin edition for
sale only in the United States and U.S. dependencies, and in
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