A Jewish Journey is the memoir of Sam Ron, born Shmuel Rakowski in Kazimierza-Wielka, a tiny village, or shtetl, near Krakow, Poland, in 1924, which was overtaken by the Nazis in 1939. As opposed to other Holocaust memoirs, the book takes the form of a Q&A with students who have met him to hear his story, underscoring the importance of Holocaust education not only for Sam himself, but also for all those who will never have the opportunity to meet a survivor. It is written in a novelistic form, in order to touch the heart as well as the mind.
Ron is one of the oldest living survivors of the Nazi death camps. After the war, he worked for Bericha, an organization that resettled in the Land of Israel orphaned refugees from Europe. He also served in the Haganah fighting force and was what is known as a chalutz, an early settler before the founding of the State of Israel, where he helped found a settlement and served as a soldier in the Haganah, the precursor to the Israel Defense Forces. He subsequently immigrated to the U.S. and was a successful land developer in Akron and Canton, Ohio. Now Sam lives in Boca Raton, Florida, and continues what he has done for over half a century: educating young and old about his experiences of the momentous historical events in which he has taken part. Along with his acclaimed work as a volunteer educator, until 2019, Sam Ron was a regular volunteer for the March of the Living, a longstanding educational program that takes students and adults to Poland and Israel to visit many of the same places where he survived—and thrived.