This outstanding book by Chris Heath, an award-winning British journalist, recounts a series of devastating events that took place in the forests of Ponar, Lithuania in 1941. At that time, 70,000 Jews were rounded up by the Nazis, shot, and dumped in pits over the course of a few days. But after completing this horrific mass murder, the Nazis became nervous that the advancing Soviet troops would discover the evidence. Three years later, in 1944, they forced eighty enslaved Jewish men to perform the grisly task of exhuming the rotting corpses and burning them in huge pyres in order to conceal the original deed.
But Heath’s research does not end there. His book peels back yet another layer of the Ponar story, one in which twelve of the eighty men found the imagination and fortitude to escape — and to tell the tale of the horrors they endured. Their breathtaking escape — which involved using spoons and their bare hands to dig a tunnel, despite being guarded twenty-four hours a day — will inspire scholars and everyday readers alike.
No Road Leading Back includes first-person accounts from escapees and their witnesses. Heath sifts through documents, diaries, and other personal testimonies to work through contradictions and discrepancies and reveal the truth. He argues that uncomfortable historical truths often remain buried because of a lack of honesty among the perpetrators, and he blames Lithuania for not owning up to its war crimes.
With this book, the victims of Ponar are finally given the attention it deserves. As Heath puts it, “There can often be a great distance between speaking out and being heard.” This powerful book will enable the world to listen.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
