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Excerpt of The Avengers by Rich Cohen
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Abba, Ruzka, Vitka -- this was not an ordinary relationship, not the conventional idea of a married couple crossing the fence to visit a neighbor. These people had met over thirty years before, in the cramped streets of Vilna, the capital of Lithuania -- kids caught in the second act of World War II. Some people have tried to cast their relationship in terms of a traditional love triangle. They say Ruzka and Vitka were in love with Abba, or Abba and Ruzka were in love with Vitka, or Vitka and Abba were in love with Ruzka. In truth, all were in love with all. They finished one another's sentences, read one another's thoughts. The things they endured and survived bound them in ways hard for anyone living today to imagine.

For the most part, they did not like to talk about the past, or about their own exploits. They wanted to know about America, or Chicago, or, in my case, the rigors of fifth grade. Only slowly, often from the mouths of other people, did we learn of the underground army they formed in Europe, of the battles they fought with the Germans, of how they escaped Vilna moments before the Jewish ghetto was destroyed. There were also stories of the forest, where they lived and fought for a year, blowing up enemy trains and transports. The forest is where they spent their last days in Europe. It is where the old life came to an end. And it's where the new life began -- where Israel was born. The story of Abba, Ruzka and Vitka is, after all, a Middle Eastern story. In the woods they were already fighting as Israelis. The courage and grit they found in the trees was the most important thing they would bring to Palestine. The forest is also where they devised the outlandish plots they would carry out in the chaotic days after the War -- plots whereby they visited a measure of vengeance on the men who had killed their families. As they spoke, the sky outside filled with stars. Constellations wheeled. Yellow light glowed in the windows and the room seemed to fall into the past, to the cities and swamps of their youth.



As I grew up, I spoke with Ruzka and Abba and Vitka numerous times, on trips we took every few years to Israel and on their visits to the United States. In my memory, their story plays out before a shifting backdrop -- houses by the sea, suburban lawns, crowded restaurants. I once met Abba in Tel Aviv at the Diaspora Museum, which he had conceived and designed. The museum was built to tell the story not just of the slaughter of the Holocaust, but of the years of Jewish life that had come before the slaughter. His hair was long and gray and he wore chinos and kept his hands in his pockets. He led me through halls of documents and photographs. In one room, he stood before a detailed model of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, a graceful network of arches and supports. "How can you know what we lost," said Abba, "if you don't know what we had."

I usually met Abba, Ruzka and Vitka in their homes on the kibbutz, in rooms crowded with books and music and paintings. Abba and Vitka's son, Michael, is a painter, and often I sat looking at his airy watercolors of houses in the Negev desert. As Abba or Ruzka spoke, doors opened and members of the old crowd wandered in, smiling and laughing, filling in the story. To an American, these people seemed an exotic hybrid -- rugged intellectuals, fighters schooled only by their experience and curiosity. When Ruzka listened, she let her hands fall to her sides, opened her eyes and drank in every word. I often spoke with her as we walked the narrow lanes of the kibbutz, past houses glowing with life, insects underfoot. She held her hands behind her back and talked in a soft voice.

Our visits to the kibbutz were mostly passed happily with our family, with Ruzka and her children -- who are my cousins -- Yehuda and Yonat and Ghadi, their spouses, and their children. Still, whenever I found a chance, I steered the conversation back to Europe, their lives before the war, how they survived, what they did when peace came. I suppose I was obsessed. To me, their story seemed to offer a view of history different from what I saw on television or read in books -- this was World War II as seen from the East, by those on the bottom, by Jews who, with nothing else to lose, decided to fight.

Excerpted from The Avengers by Rich Cohen Copyright© 2000 by Rich Cohen. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.