Author Chris Heath visits Riverstone Books to talk about his new book, No Roads Leading Back, with Emily Loeb. Join us for this discussion, followed by a time for Q&A and book signing.
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About the book:
This by turns shattering and hope-giving account of prisoners who dug their way to freedom from the Nazis is both a stunning escape narrative and an object lesson in the ways 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 site where more than 70,000 Jews were shot in the Lithuanian forest of Ponar after the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe in 1941. Anxious to hide the incriminating evidence of the murders, the S.S. later in the war enslaved a group of Jews to exhume every one of the bodies and incinerate them all in a months-long labor—an episode whose specifics are staggering and disturbing, even within the context of the Holocaust. From within that dire circumstance emerges the improbable escape made by some of the men, who dug a tunnel with bare hands and spoons while they were trapped and guarded day and night—an act not just of bravery and desperation but of awesome imagination. Based on first-person accounts of the escapees and on each scrap of evidence that has been documented, repressed, or amplified since, this book resurrects their lives, while also 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.
About the author:
Award-winning journalist CHRIS HEATH has written about a wide array of subjects for GQ, The Atlantic, Esquire and Vanity Fair. His story “18 Tigers, 17 Lions, 8 Bears, 3 Cougars, 2 Wolves, 1 Baboon, 1 Macaque, and 1 Man Dead in Ohio.” won the 2013 National Magazine Award for Reporting; his story “The Militiamen, the Governor and the Kidnapping That Wasn’t” was nominated for the 2023 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. He has also written about popular culture, including the books Pet Shop Boys, Literally and the 2004 UK bestseller Feel, about British pop star Robbie Williams. He co-wrote the lyrics for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Boy in the Dress, which premiered in Stratford in November 2019. Based in Brooklyn, Heath grew up south of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
About the conversation partner:
A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Emily became involved with the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh in 2018, when she started volunteering as a Generations Speaker. Since early 2023, Emily has served as the Director of Programs and Education, in which she oversees the Holocaust Center’s public and education programs, as well as fundraising and the annual budget. Prior to joining the Holocaust Center, for over a decade, Emily ran the Gendler Grapevine Project, a sunset initiative established to honor the work and vision of Rabbi Everett Gendler that funded initiatives that celebrated the deep connections between Jewish traditions, social justice, and the environment. She is currently writing a book about Rabbi Gendler’s life. Prior to that, she worked for a Native American-owned and focused consulting company, where she served as a project manager, proposal writer, and editor. With the goal of centering her professional and volunteer work around causes she believes in, in 2017, she founded Shattering Glass Ceilings Scholarship for women who are first-generation college students. Emily grew up in Kansas City, where her grandmother was a Survivor Speaker for the local Holocaust center. Emily earned her bachelor’s degree at Colgate University, studying Geography and Peace Studies, and a master’s degree in Geography from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, two teenaged kids, and two Boston Terriers. She loves being with her family, hiking, gardening, writing, and doing what she can to make the world a better place.