Levi's War — Julie Thomas

Levi's War follows on from The Keeper of Secrets and Rachel's Legacy, tracing the story of the eldest Horowitz son, Levi, who is smuggled out of Berlin to London the day after the Kristallnacht in 1938, where he makes the momentous decision to be parachuted back behind enemy lines and fight as a Partisan, culminating in the crucial role he plays in saving the Jews of Assisi. What family Levi Horowitz has left after the Holocaust assume that their silent observer spent WW2 interred in a camp for 'foreign aliens' on the Isle of Man and that his experience was so different from Simon's in Dachau, that shame kept him quiet. These assumptions could not be further from the truth. Enraged by what he sees The Third Reich doing to his homeland, Levi volunteers for a program that uses his language skills and his acting ability but demands tremendous courage. He is parachuted behind enemy lines into France in late 1940 and helps to establish the resistance network there, before heading north to Denmark and Norway. A botched raid sees him arrested by the Gestapo and condemned to transportation to a 'labour camp' out east. But he escapes from the moving cattle train and makes his way to Italy. When the medieval town of Assisi is over-run by German troops Levi is in a unique position to participate in one of the most extraordinary true stories of WW2. He battles with his own inner demons, becomes one of the most unlikely Partisans and unlike so many, he survives with his secrets intact.