Tricks of Fate

One aspect of Holocaust experience and literature has been largely undocumented -- up to now. The value and importance of "Tricks of Fate" is that it fills in this apparent void in Holocaust literature. Morris Gruda's flight through Nazi occupied Poland and into the Soviet Union, his struggles for survival and his return to Poland at the end of the war is a unique story, but one which he shared with many other Jews. Indeed, it is estimated that 300,000 Jews were caught in or escaped into Russian-occupied Poland shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. Many of these Jews later participated in the Russian war against Germany after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Morris Gruda was one of them. Morris Gruda has powerfully re-created the traumas, the disasters, the minor triumphs, the hunger and disease, the endless vagaries of pure chance that allowed him to survive. He has not only filled a void in the literature, but he emerges as an immensely sensitive, humane individual struggling to survive and to reunite his family. Morris Gruda emigrated to Canada after the war and has become a successful businessman, philanthropist, noted Yiddish writer and poet, a father of two children and the grandfather of twelve.