Little, Brown No Road Leading Back An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust.

by Chris Heath

This shattering and inspiring account of prisoners who dug their way out of torture and imprisonment by the Nazis is both a stunning escape narrative and an object lesson in how we remember and continually forget the particulars of the Holocaust.No Road Leading Back is the remarkable story of a dozen prisoners who escaped from the pits where more than 70,000 Jews were shot in the Lithuanian forest after the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe in 1941. Anxious to hide the incriminating evidence of the murders, the S.S. enslaved a group of Jews to exhume every one of the bodies and incinerate them all in a months-long labour - an episode whose specifics are staggering and disturbing, even within the context of the Holocaust. Trapped in almost unimaginable horror, some of the men who were part of this 'burning brigade' put together an audacious escape plan. They dug a tunnel with their bare hands and spoons despite being guarded day and night - an act not just of great bravery and desperation but of extraordinary imagination. Based on first-person accounts of the escapees and on every scrap of evidence that has been documented, repressed, or amplified since, this book resurrects the lives of these men and their acts of witness, as well as providing a complex, urgent analysis of why their story has rarely been told, and never accurately. Heath explores the cultural use and misuse of Holocaust testimony and the need for us to face it - and all uncomfortable historical truths - with honesty and accuracy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Holocaust, Historical, Jewish, Military History

640 pages, Hardcover

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Diana Eberhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written and engaging, but it was hard to work my way through it. The horror, the horror…

“It may be appealing to imagine there is a clear-cut distinction between participants in the Holocaust and everyone else, but to do so avoids thinking about what actually took place…it avoids thinking about those who closed the shutters and pretended that this wasn’t happening; those who were willing to accept a sudden glut of secondhand possessions, or a move into a newly vacant house; those who knew everything, those who knew something, and those who didn’t know because they didn’t want to know; those who encouraged this, and those who accepted that this was just how things now were.”

[Dax · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive piece of scholarship. The first part of the book that tells the story of Ponary and the escapees is riveting and depressing, but the real value add is the remaining 2/3rds of the book that studies how we remember the Holocaust and the people who survived it. It's a horrifying read, to be sure, but it is a critical addition to the study of the Holocaust. I was not familiar with Heath before coming across this book, but he will always be on my radar now. Objective, thorough, and a talented writer. Strongly recommend for anyone who can withstand the terrible events within.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a monumental act of remembering. Buttressed by incredible research, No Road Leading Back is the definitive English-language overview of the part of the Holocaust that took place in the Ponar forest outside Vilma, Lithuania. Heath traces the stories of the dozen men who escaped via a painstakingly-created tunnel, their postwar lives, and.the ebbs and flows of the story’s emergence and telling in the decades leading up to the present.

[Marcia Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This powerful examination of a lesser-known act of pure evil during the Holocaust was previously unknown to me. The author spent years trying to learn more about the murderous extinction of thousands of Jews in the Ponar forest in Lithuania. Thanks to his meticulous research and devoted scholarship, he was able to piece together what happened, how the terrified prisoners were treated, and how an unlikely group of prisoners desperate to survive dug a tunnel and pulled off a daring escape.

His painstaking work and many conversations with survivors, witnesses, and other investigators from around the world enabled him to bring this terrible story to new readers. It's wrenching but needs to be told.

It was challenging to keep track of the many known prisoners, some of whom changed their names or were called by nicknames. Photographs, maps, and other visuals were helpful and heartbreaking.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mix of literary nonfiction, personally narrated history, and academic research, this is not a straightforward Holocaust history, and all the better for it. The author unspools a complicated event that was largely ignored for decades with frank admission of the innate contradictions and loose ends that, as he points out, imbue it with historical legitimacy. His painstaking research and thoughtful inquiry make the Ponar escape story both profound and, at least in fact if not in emotion, comprehensible to the reader. At times the book veers into what felt to me like granular hair-splitting with other chroniclers, but it is a remarkable testimony and a monumental achievement of scholarship undertaken with respect about an atrocity that defies understanding.

[Meilech · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy through the Goodreads giveaway.

This is an amazing yet very sad story that is rarely discussed in the holocaust discussion.

Chris does an amazing job first telling the story as well as tracing back every detail of the story and the discussion around it.

This is a must read!!

[Michele Knopp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Chris Heath has done extensive research for this book. A must read!

[atom_box Evan G · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think WWII books are "been there; done that", I encourage you to read a few pages of No Road Leading Back. I think you will be hooked. My wife and I fought for possession of this book.

The subject of the book, the pits at Ponar, is compelling. The writing style is hypnotic. I kept trying to quit the book but it was a bit addictive.

Chris Heath makes this story subtle, easy to read, low-key, and very rewarding. The main story comes at you in parts, with some Rashomon-like qualities. I promised myself I would put the book down circa Page 150, after Heath finished telling the main story. But Chris Heath kept revealing additional aspects: "...but wait, there's more to this". And he was always correct: he repeatedly found more and more ways to cut up the stories.

Highly recommended.

[Cathy Nunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t praise this book enough. It took me a long time to read. It is a well written dense work full of lyrical prose and documented information, but the the truth is so horrible that I could only read for a few days at a time. Kudos Mr Heath.

[Lauren Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that is very informative about a part of the Holocaust I didn’t know about. Centering on those who lived it, Heath never forgets what the heart of this history is.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Heath explores, from every angle imaginable, another horrific chapter in the history of the Holocaust. The dramatic escape of twelve Jewish captives from the Nazi extermination camp in Ponar, Lithuania, is the central event through which Heath describes the fate of the Lithuanian Jews, the pre- and post-war lives of the twelve men who survived, and the way in which the story of what happened at Ponar was almost forgotten, then revived, but subsequently told with many inaccuracies and in-fighting over who gets to tell the story. Chris Heath, a journalist, has done a monumental amount of investigative work in connecting the many pieces of this story into a coherent narrative. He writes with clarity and compassion. Actual rating: 4.5.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would say except for the book “The Cold Crematorium” one of the most important books on the Holocaust I have read. What is so special about this book is how Chris Heath presents perfectly how a decision can save yr life for another day or — not . He also shares what one did or not did to survive - there is no simple answers. The amount of research is admirable . As a child of a survivor myself and always looking for missing information is like going down a rabbit hole . I was so impressed Chris was able to explain
His research and yet keep my interest

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway.Prior to this I was not familiar with the author or title. I have read a large selection of books covering WW 2 and the holocaust. I was not familiar with Ponar. The first 1/3 of the book was very difficult to read due to the graphic nature of the horrific experiences innocents were subjected to. The book was very informative and it is clear the author carefully and thoroughly researched the subject. I also enjoyed the continued research and details of the survivors lives following their escape. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the events of the holocaust or the time period.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very very well researched. The beginning chapters were hard to read because of the horrific nature of the events being covered. Later chapters explored the ways in which these events have been remembered and portrayed in various ways. Not easy reading but important subject matter. I learned a lot and am glad I read it all the way through.

[Edie Hanafin Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the subject matter was horrific, I found myself compelled to finish reading this book about Ponar, the Lithuanian death camp where an estimated 100,000 Jewish people and others were brutally shot, then dug up by prisoners and burned by Nazis during WWII. The author interviewed prisoner survivors who dug their way out of the pit where they were forced to live and fled into the nearby forest after their escape, facing even more dangers. The author documents every detail.

[BOOKLOVER EB · Rating 4 out of 5]

“No Road Leading Back,” is a thorough and harrowing account of the horrors that occurred in Ponar, a forest in Lithuania, during World War II. Journalist Chris Heath spends well over five hundred pages recounting the invasion of Lithuania by the German army; the imprisonment of the Jews in ghettos; and the systematic shooting of at least seventy-thousand Jewish men and women and children in Ponar. Their bodies were subsequently dug up and burned on pyres (to eliminate evidence of the carnage) by prisoners forced to carry out this dreadful task. Some of the captives decided to attempt an ambitious escape plan. They dug a tunnel underneath the pit where they spent their nights. Miraculously, they succeeded in completing the tunnel, but sadly only twelve managed to get away.

Heath wrote this work of non-fiction partly to shed light on an unpleasant reality. There is a reason that few people have heard of Ponar. Even though countless manuscripts have been written and scores of documentaries have been made about the Holocaust, only a small number allude to this particular extermination site. Those that do mention Ponar often get the facts wrong. Heath tells us this in order to stress the elusiveness of truth. Memories can be faulty, verification of decades-old events is difficult to come by, and anti-Semitic governments in the Soviet era falsified facts about the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Because of the shortcomings of written and oral records—and the lack of Holocaust education in most schools—historians and others who care about this subject must constantly remind the world about the attempted eradication of European Jewry by the Nazis and their collaborators.

One of the factors that makes this book unique is Heath’s obsessive search for every scrap of information that he could unearth about Ponar’s survivors. He tracked down as many eyewitnesses and their descendants as he could, and traveled far and wide to interview them. His research is prodigious, drawing on such primary and secondary sources as memoirs, newspaper articles, diaries, and letters. It takes quite a bit of patience to finish “No Road Leading Back,” which is so long that it will likely defeat all but the most dedicated readers. On a brighter note, we cannot help but be inspired by the courage of the escapees who, having experienced so much trauma, went on to find work, marry, and have children in Israel and elsewhere. In addition, those who agreed to bear witness did so in spite of the immense emotional pain that it caused them to revisit the most traumatic events of their lives.

[Laurel Mejia-Medina]

Chris Health has spent years painstakingly researching the atrocities of Ponar and documenting the lives of the survivors, who in the face of unspeakable horror miraculously escape the Nazis. In a truly superb work of journalism, Health manages to chronicle the interwoven network of the escapees following the war, and how their story was and wasn’t told. The breadth of research and attention to detail is shocking.

I was brought to tears several times by the depth of evil that is shown in this book- stories overflowing with broken families and unimaginable grief. Health makes a compelling case for how the stories of the Holocaust should be told. He urges readers to be in relentless pursuit of truth, however messy and uncomfortable that truth may be.

One part of the book that stood out to me was how the surrounding community was at best complacent and at worst implicated in the massacre that unfolded in their backyard. Stories like this force one to truly introspect. How do I face and ignore injustices in my own life. This story will stay with me.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to wait a while before posting a review to reflect after reading this book. This is a book that you have to read in parts…take pauses when necessary.

I have studied, read and taught about the Holocaust for 25 years, I am always saddened and amazed how many new and terrible elements I learn about. This book is one of the most brutal and personal accounts of a genocide that I have ever read. The author painstakingly researched and interviewed any and all available people and sources involved with the Vilnius Massacre. He visited the important historical locations including the site, itself. The intense personal nature of the Vilnius massacre tears at you as you read. Every one of the millions of people killed in the Holocaust had individual stories, individual lives, families and deaths. I thank the author for writing this and helping to share the knowledge of this horrific event with a larger audience.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving narrative that tells the stories of 12 escapees of the Ponar camp. In their stories, the author manages to capture a fragment of the torment the Jews underwent at the hands of the Nazis and their sympathizers during WWII in Lithuania. Thoroughly researched and written in a form that sucks you in from the first paragraph. This is a powerful collection of stories that should be told and shared so that the world never forgets what can happen when fascists cow democracy and people seek scapegoats. Never forget.

[Christine Barth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book represents an insane amount of research and an invaluable look at the process of doing history.
It is very difficult to read, given the intense subject matter and wrestles with many unanswerable questions, that are important to wrestle with.
I think the author also does a good job of keeping his personal views out of it, examining every detail from all sides.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The horrific narrative of how a dozen men dug a tunnel and evaded S.S. officers while they were prisoners in Lithuania's Ponar forest during WWII, what happened to them afterwards, and the uncomfortable truths they left behind. Whenever you think you've heard about all the monstrous things the Nazi's made their prisoners do, there's still so much more story left to tell.

[Leonard Hanser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hidden Holocaust revealed

Anyone seriously interested in the Holocaust, whether as part of a professional inquiry or as a layperson, should read this book. It enlightens a relatively unknown aspect of the subject and demonstrates the complexity of accurately revealing the Holocaust. The author’s determination to document his research is quite admirable.

[Tonja Candelaria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! The research that went into this book, the ugly history laid bare, the knowledge that not too long ago people did this to other people, those who endured. Such recent history that I hope never repeats itself.

[Pat Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of the book was incredible. I've read a great deal on the Holocaust, but like many, I had never heard the details of what happened in Ponar. The last half of the book was very tedious at times and I think it would have benefited greatly for more editing.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a free advance digital review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

In mid-1941, the German army was advancing into eastern Europe at will. Lithuania fell easily to them, and they dug in. They found, in the small town of Ponar/Ponary/Paneriai, a near-perfect site for implementing (along with local collaborators) what history calls the Holocaust By Bullets, this being before the Germans implemented their death camp system, which conducted murder mostly by mass gassing and then incinerating the corpses in large-scale crematoria. The Ponar site had been in the process of being developed by the Soviets before they retreated, and had several large and deep pits. The large site was fairly secluded and fenced, but still easily accessible. An estimated 70,000 local Jews were rounded up and shot to death in the pits.

Three years later, the Soviets were advancing and the Germans didn’t want their genocidal work discovered. They ordered about 80 other Jewish prisoners to the site, kept them in an as-yet unused pit by night, in rudimentary shelters with the top of the pit half-covered, while by day they exhumed the corpses of the long-dead victims and put them into huge pyres for burning with the aid of oil. It’s astonishing that such appalling actions took place, but what’s more astonishing is that 12 of the Jews who were part of the exhumation team managed, over the course of more than three months, to surreptitiously hand-dig a tunnel from their pit and, late one night, they escaped and survived the war.

Author Chris Heath tells the story of the Ponar murders and escapes, with the personal stories of the escapees, but also what came after. You would think the escape story would be well-known and celebrated, but it isn’t. I’ve read a lot of books about the Holocaust and even knew about Ponar, but I never read about the escapes. Most disheartening is that though good evidence existed to substantiate the escape, the escapees found that most people didn’t want to hear the story and didn’t believe it happened. In 2004, Lithuanian scientists found the opening of the tunnel at the pit end, but it wasn’t until 2016 that a multinational team located the tunnel as a whole. A good deal of publicity accompanied the 2016 discovery, and only then, after the escapees had died, did the escape story become widely publicized. How grotesque that the escapees had to spend their whole postwar lives trying to recover from their horrific wartime experiences, and also come to terms with the fact that the world didn’t want to know or believe their story.

Chris Heath also thoughtfully addresses the general Lithuanian denial of responsibility for their role in the Holocaust. I will not get into that here, because you almost would have to write a book to do the topic justice.

Some of the latter chapters of the book, which discuss the archeological excavation work at Ponar, are more lengthy and detailed than I would prefer, but in other respects I found this an informative book about not just the historical facts, but about the states of mind of the Jews and non-Jewish Lithuanians, both during the 20th century and the present day. It is also deeply thoughtful about the mental and emotional conflict that these escapees went through as they exhumed the corpses of friends, neighbors, and even family, and still fought to survive and seek some kind of a “normal” life in a world they couldn’t possibly trust any more.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book! I thought after reading as many Holocaust books as I have that I had heard everything; but I definitely had not. This book is one of the hardest I have read and I had to put it down several times just to think about what I had read and digest it before being able to read on. The author takes us on a journey to Lithuania and untangles the story of escape from a Nazi camp. It was definitely an unusual camp and one from which no one was to survive.
The camp, as it was, was barely outside of Vilnius, Lithuania. The Russians had begun digging pits in which to place fuel tanks. These pits were hidden within the beautiful forest of Ponor (Ponary). This forest had been a place where people from the town spent their Sundays with their families enjoying the beautiful scenery and peacefulness. They would also search the woods for berries and mushrooms. It was also the home of seven varieties of bats. When the Russians came, it became off limits for the people of Vilnius. Then the Germans came and ran the Russians out of Lithuania. The Jews of Vilnius were placed in a ghetto and fear reigned over Vilnius.
There were relatively few Germans in charge; but the Lithuanians stepped up to help them. Beginning with small groups, victims, mainly Jews; but others too, were taken into the woods and shot. Their bodies were placed in the pits that were already there and covered with the local sand that was there. Everyone saw the victims being led into the woods and heard the shots, so they knew what was happening. Eventually more and more victims were led into the woods and the pits filled up. The men who filled the pits with sand were all prisoners brought to the pits for that job.
Eventually the pits filled up and the orders came down to destroy the evidence of the killings. Thus the prisoners had a new job. They were to dig up the bodies and burn them. They lived in one of the pits at night and worked during the day while the killings continued.
The details of their job is given in the book. It is very detailed in its description as the descriptions come from the men themselves. Several of them even found their own families among the bodies. It was evident that if the pits were ever cleared, they would be the last on the pyres. There was no leaving Ponor alive.
However, the men came up with the idea of digging a trench beneath the wall of the pit into the woods and escaping. Would it work or would someone in camp give them away? Would they be able to keep the trench from falling in with the sandy soil? Could they all get out? How long would it take them?

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best historical book I've read! The author first tells the story of the men (and to a minor extent women) who were confined to Ponar to erase (burn) evidence of mass murder and mass graves through exhuming and burning bodies. Followed by the story of their escape via a tunnel the captives spent months digging. The story is told in the survivors own words, which the author has pulled from various sources and interviewed when possible. The variances in the escapees stories is acknowledged in a way that supports the individual stories in a way that has you thinking, ah yes, the unexplicable emotional and physical trauma would definitely have made each person remember the experience differently.
After telling the story of Ponar and the escape the author moves on to telling the survivors stories after they escaped. This moving narrative is once again filled with events and commentary taken directly from the survivors, their writings, recordings of interviews or at times interviews with their loved ones.
The last part of the book goes on to talk about how the Ponar tunnel escape has been remembered and misremembered for the past 70ish years. Through poor research or recognition when "preserving" the site, hearsay, inaccurate documentstion, to lack of funding for archeological digs it's a wonder that the author was able to tease through all the information and make the best attempt at telling the story accurately. He does, however, acknowledge this challenge and even that he may unknowingly have created inaccurate information.
What makes this book the best historical books I've read, is not the story the author has told, but the veil he has lifted on museums, books, historical sites, etc. He has shared how easy it is got misinterpretations to perpetuate but most of all, how important it is to dig in and research historical events with an open mind and question what's in front of you.
I feel so incredibly fortunate to have received this Goodreads Giveaway right as I am starting my Gradaute Archival Studies program.
I believe this book has provided me insights into the importance of archiving and memorializing our past without bias, and with questioning.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. I will be thinking about this book for a long time. Heath meticulously pulls together an enormous amount of (sometimes-conflicting) material about 12 men who escaped from hell under the Nazis in Lithuania.
Confined to a deep pit by night, during the day these men were among 80 shackled people, almost all of them Jews, forced to dig up and burn the bodies of some 70,000 shot by the Nazis starting in 1941. They came up with an audacious plan to build a tunnel and escape their captors.
Heath recounts the stories of how these men came to be in Ponar, a forest outside Vilnius, how they lived in the terrible months in the pit, and what happened to each of them in the years and decades that followed. The chapter that describes the bodies the men dug up was both utterly gripping and exceedingly difficult to read; Heath makes a sensitive choice in exclusively using the survivors' own descriptions of the bodies of thousands of people whose lives were cut short. Some of these men came across neighbors and family members; some of the bodies were decayed or practically flat, crushed by so many bodies above them; and the men's description of how some children died was so disturbing that I don't even want to mention it here.
The Ponar survivors' story is remarkable and would have been worth reading just for its misery, horror, sorrow, and sheer heroism. But then Heath adds on so many layers in the second half of the book, revealing how the Ponar escapees' story has been told and forgotten and told again, and how people have used and misused it. Utterly fascinating.
I listened to the audiobook and found the narrator, Vas Eli, a bit staccato. But he handled the most horrific details from Ponar with sensitivity, and as far as I could tell, smoothly pronounced words from many different languages (for example, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Russian, German, Hebrew, and Polish.) I did miss out on a few photos that are described in the text and presumably are shown in the print book.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: Goodreads Giveaway Recipient

I don't know if it's my age, or some other reason, but WW2 speaks to me.... the stories of the resistance, Hogan's Heroes (and I love that most of the Germans were played by Jews, and that their contracts said that the Nazis would always be idiots), and the histories of the people who were erased. Before I read Anne Frank, I read a chapter book that my brother was reading about Nordic children that were sneaking gold away from the Nazis to help the resistance. Corrie ten Boom blew me away. When I was about four, my parents took me to my first movie: The Sound of Music (and I have read the true versions). It seems that in the last couple of decades more stories have been told, and I find that most are from Eastern Europe... which has led me to wonder if information that was not available during the time of the USSR has come to light.

Ponar was a park-like setting. At the beginning of the war, it was under Russian control and many pits were dug for fuel storage. One got as far as being lined with stones. Then Germany turned on Russia, invading Lithuania. No spoilers here, it's in the book's description.... but being Nazis, and having these ready made pits, you can imagine how they used them.... and later, realized that 70,000 was a LOT of corpses.... and brought more Jews in to live in the stone-lined pit while digging up the corpses in the other pits for burning.

This sounds depressing, and I won't kid you, it was a hard read, but one of the foci of this book were the stories of many of the 13 men believed to escape (some definitely did) through a tunnel they dug from their pit.

It blows my mind to realize that we are about 90 years past the rise of the Nazis... and we are still discovering some of the horrors. With some of the things we are seeing in the world, it is important that we bear witness to this history through these stories... that we not forget them.... and that we strive to make sure that these horrors are not repeated.

[Joel Ungar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly remarkable story of a largely unknown Holocaust murder site

I had never heard of Ponar, a city near Vilna/Vilnius, Lithuania, or the Jews that were murdered there, or that 12 prisoners escaped, prior to reading this book. The author does the expected history of the murders, the involvement of locals in the killings, and the escape. The author traces the lives of most of the escapees. That alone is riveting.

It's the rest that stood out. There are numerous reasons why the Ponar murders are not well known. For one, they don't fit neatly into the classic Holocaust narratives - these people didn't die in gas chambers. They were part of the Holocaust by bullets, where people were shot down by machine guns, rifles, or even handguns. There were local issues as well, including all the years Lithuania was under Soviet domination.

I never imagined such a simple issue could be made so complex, and the author does a tremendous job exploring all these aspects.

This is likely the best book I will read all year.