The year: 1941. The city: Lvov, Poland. The fear level: palpable. To be Jewish in this time and place is to be the prey; the hunted. Entire families disappeared overnight never to be seen again. Hitler’s regime hijacked and took possession of homes and businesses, leaving others penniless. Nazi soldiers roamed the streets, mercilessly rounding up innocent civilians. This was the harsh reality Jewish families faced in Poland during the Holocaust. This was no place for a child to fend for herself and avoid certain death.

Trapped Inside the Story by Leslie Cohen, ISBN: 978-1-933769-16-5, Hardcover, Illustrated, 24.95, 336 pages.

“Today, decades later it is unthinkable that the horror and cruelty that Jews suffered during the Holocaust are denounced as fiction by some politicians,” says author and Cultural Anthropologist Leslie Cohen. “In recent weeks the presidents of Iran and Venezuela have both claimed the Holocaust never happened. That is why Holocaust survivors feel it is so important to share their stories; to raise their voices and drown out those ridiculous and insulting allegations.”

While museums and historians have carefully documented the Holocaust atrocities, one of the most harrowing descriptions of the Nazi occupation comes from the voice of a child, Sonya Hebenstreit. Sonya lost her entire family in a six-month period and was forced to rely on her wits and instincts to stay alive during one of the darkest eras of human history. Cohen chronicles Sonya’s struggle to survive in her new book, Trapped Inside the Story.

Sonya had just turned 13 years old when she found herself all alone and plunged into a bleak and terrifying new existence. A heart-wrenching yet inspiring tale, Cohen begins with Sonya’s early memories of happier times with her family. She is a typical little girl, going to school and reading fairy tales. Slowly, her sense of safety and security is chipped away as a blanket of anxiety falls on her neighborhood. Sonya witnesses hushed and worried conversations between her parents, the devastation of air raids, and finally, the unthinkable; all her family members die or simply disappear.

Cohen vividly recreates the pervasive duress that permeated every facet of life for Sonya as she roamed the streets, trying to sell clothing or cigarettes—anything to scrape together some money to buy food—all the while trying to avoid the clutches of the Nazi soldiers who would randomly round up the Jews and haul them away. With the constant fear of capture or retribution looming over the neighborhood, Sonya quickly discovered that the only person she could trust was herself.

In those desperate hours, she found comfort in the fairytales from her early childhood. Sonya began relying on imaginary conversations with story’s heroes to help make decisions that were literally, a matter of life or death. “Here you have a child thrust into a situation where each decision she makes could truly be her last,” says Cohen. “She didn’t have the luxury of seeking advice and instead, Sonya would think about what the fairy tale hero would do and so that became her point of reference and her coping strategy. She felt like she was trapped inside a brutal and tragic fairy tale that had somehow come to life around her.”

Trapped Inside the Story not only recounts Sonya’s desperate fight to survive, it also captures the voices of the missing and the dead. In the book, Cohen helps answer some of the nagging questions about the Holocaust. “People always want to know why the Jews didn’t just leave,” says Cohen. “But when the first rustlings of rumors about Hitler’s death camps made it to the streets, the descriptions were so vicious and so horrific, people simply couldn’t believe it was true. They thought those who talked of the concentration camps weren’t ‘right in the head.’ Of course now, we know otherwise.”

Everyone’s talking about “Trapped Inside the Story”

• Dr. Jill Kasen says “Lvov is a town of mythic proportion for post-Holocaust Jews and, indeed, for Eastern Europeans in general. With the retelling of Sonya’s childhood memories, Leslie Cohen offers hope to holocaust survivors and their children, to Europeans and those in the Middle East, to all of us everywhere.”

• Elianna James says, “A story of courage and optimism—and it's all real—based on the fantastic true life Holocaust survival story of Sonya Hebenstreit.”

• Lauri Kamiel says, "Creative, touching, and beautifully translated, "Trapped Inside the Story" is an intimate and captivating portrait of a young girl’s horrific experience. You will not forget her story.

• Brenda Landes raves, "A young girl entirely alone in a terrifying and hostile world remembers stories told her as a very young child. These stories, that gave Sonya hope and faith that she would survive the Holocast, are beautifully written. Leslie Cohen has written an important book."

A Short Extract: The Legend of the Wild Hens

Wanda helps him take off his boots and Maria warms up a bowl of soup for him. “I saw something very strange on my way,” he tells us, and we all sit around him, listening to his story: “On the road to Lublin, I saw a group of Jews marching along the road, dragging their feet, and stumbling along. All they were wearing was the striped pajamas of prisoners. The German soldiers were screaming at them to move faster, and striking them with whips all of the time.” Granny B says, “Those must be the last Jews left in the world!” Maria asks her, “What makes you think so?” Granny answers, “I’m sure they’re the last ones! There are no more wild hens to be seen anywhere.” Maria asks her, “What has that got do with the Jews?” Granny answers, “Do you mean to say you don’t know the legend? For every Jew alive, there is a wild hen somewhere in nature. When all of the wild hens are gone, that means all of the Jews have died.” “I never knew that!” Maria exclaims. Zhislav says, “That explains it!” and he shrugs his shoulders. After that, the subject is dropped, and everybody asks to see what Zhislav has brought back from Lublin. But I’m deeply shocked. I’ve never heard the legend about the wild hens. Am I, then, the last Jew alive on the face of the earth? If so, how long will it be before the Nazis discover where I’m hiding, and come to take me away? I struggle to keep my face like a mask, without any expression, knowing it could be very dangerous if they should suspect that I’m a Jew. Meanwhile, my insides are churning. I continue rocking the cradle where the twins are sleeping, and I wait miserably for the hours to pass, wondering if the Nazis will come that very night to arrest me. I toss and turn in my bed, getting very little sleep, thinking about what to do.

As morning approaches, I come up with a plan. As soon as the family awakens, I make an offer to Maria, saying, “Why don’t I go down to the spring in the valley and bring back water?” Naturally, Maria is very pleased with me for offering to go. This is the coldest winter that anyone can remember. The water has frozen in the well in our courtyard. In order to get water, we would have to melt snow, or someone would have to go to the spring. I see this as an opportunity to get out of the house and go off on my own for a while. So I carry two buckets on a wooden yoke across my shoulders, and take the long walk to the spring to fetch water. I wade through the heavy snow, sinking into it up to my knees with every step. But I’m happy to be out of the house and on my own for a while. As I get nearer to the spring, I see footprints in the snow. They look like the footprints of some kind of wild birds. My heart starts beating faster. I haven’t seen any wild hens, but I’m almost sure these footprints couldn’t have been made by any other animal. For the first time since Zhislav returned from the market in Lublin, I feel a ray of hope. The spring is bordered by many trees, and their branches are heavy with snow and hanging low. I lift up my eyes, and on the branches I see wild hens—not just a few, but many of them! I’m so full of joy that I begin to cry. It’s almost as if I’m seeing my relatives from Lvov again. Now I know that I’m not the only Jew left alive in the world! As I fill the buckets with water, my soul is filling with hope and optimism. I stay for as long as I can to watch the wild hens before returning to the farmhouse with the water. For the next few days, while the well is still frozen, I volunteer to fetch water from the spring every day. And every day, I take the yoke and the buckets and set off to visit my companions, the wild hens—the representatives of my fellow Jews in the world.

About the author: Leslie Cohen was born and raised in New York City. She earned her Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from Hunter College and taught anthropology at a branch of the University of Alaska for three years. In 1978, she and her husband, Mitchell, studied Hebrew at Kibbutz Ein Hashofet. Kibbutz authorities asked them asked to become members and they settled there permanently in 1980. They have three children who were all born on the kibbutz.

While teaching English in the kibbutz elementary school, Cohen met Sonya Hebenstreit and began writing her biography. To date, Cohen has published over 100 book reviews, dozens of articles, short stories and poems in a wide variety of newspapers and journals. Her book of poetry and short stories, Facets of the Poet, was published in 2001.