Publisher's Synopsis
Raphael Blumenkopf is born in secrecy at the Bergen Belsen Nazi death camp on the 14th of April, 1945. His birth is an unprecedented miracle, as is the liberation of the camp by British forces that very afternoon. He has only his mother and a few surviving villagers from their home in Checzonovska, Poland. While the majority of the refugees leave Central Europe for Israel and the West, his band travels across Russia to China. A relative has promised jobs in Shang Hai's old Jewish settlement. The journey is fraught with threats from starving Russians, barbaric border guards, and destitute Chinese peasants. As the lives of the immigrants begin to normalize, the victory of Mao Zedung's Chinese Communist army forces them to flee, this time to Hanoi. Five years later, the communist movement in North Vietnam topples the French government, and the Jews run again. They settle in Saigon until the unrest there compels them to emigrate to America. Raphael's years in the US are colored indelibly by the poison he has experienced, and how it has damaged his mother. He seizes the chance to extract revenge from a former Nazi. Who could have envisaged the price he'd pay?
