No Time for Patience: My Road from Kaunas to Jerusalem - A Memoir of a Holocaust Survivor - Hardcover

"Zev's story is one that must be told. Despite living through the Nazi hell, Zev never lost his faith in humanity or in human culture and creativity." --Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel

"Breaking a half-century of silence, Zev Birger writes from the heart in a memoir that is all the more moving for its restrained style...Written with understated eloquence, his engrossing survivor's account is a story of remarkable courage told with great modesty." --"Publishers Weekly"

"A richly worthwhile contribution to the library of Holocaust memoirs and a testament to spiritual resistance." --"Jewish Book World"

"An uplifting addition to the Holocaust genre. Recommended." --"Library Journal"

""No Time For Patience", through all of the horrors, is in the end a celebration of the human spirit. It is a book I want my children to read, and their children." --Alan Lightman, author of "Einstein's Dreams"

""No Time For Patience" is a great gift to us all...We feel an intimate connection and experience the grace and urgency with which Zev tells his story. And that is the greatest accomplishment of the book--the way he makes us all his kin." --Nan Graham, Editor-in-Chief, "Scribner"

"Zev Birger's memoir is an inspiration to us all. A powerful and moving story of suffering and survival, his book of remembrance gives true meaning to the words, 'To Life!'" --Mel Parker, Editor-in-Chief, "Book-of-the-Month Club"

By the beloved director of the Jerusalem International Book Fair, this moving memoir follows the author's life from his Lithuanian childhood to the death camps in Dachau, and his years after the liberation, helping to build the State of Israel. Persuaded by a legion of adoring international book editors and publishers around the world to write his account of the Holocaust, Zev Birger describes in this riveting, ultimately uplifting story how his idyllic childhood in a Zionist family in Kovno, Lithuania, was destroyed-first by the Soviet invasion in 1940, then by the German occupation-and his subsequent deportation to the ghetto. In powerful, simple prose, he portrays his family's efforts to survive there, which ended in their discovery by the SS in a cellar hideaway as gunfire sounded from the approaching front. His family was separated and deported to the Dachau concentration camp, where Birger was forced into heavy labor in an underground arms factory. The only survivor in his family, he was brought to an American-run army hospital after the liberation, where he was so emaciated he was given up for dead. He rallied against all odds and went on to help Jews establish themselves in Israel, where he played an active role in the construction of the Israeli state, especially in building the book publishing and film production industries within the country, and bringing them recognition throughout the world. Originally published in Germany in 1997 by Luchterhand jointly with eight other German publishers, this is the first English-language edition.