Letters From Rifka Read online

  Many Russians sought to drive Jews from the country permanently by making their lives wretched. In the Russian Army, Jewish boys were assigned the least desirable tasks. Often, if they survived the perils of their assignments, if they survived the inadequate provisions supplied them, they were tortured or killed by their own comrades, the non-Jewish soldiers they served beside.

  This climate drove thousands and thousands of families from their homelands—not just Jews, but many others as well. In search of a better life, those families sought sanctuary in countries across the globe. We, today, are the beneficiaries of their legacy of courage and determination.

  Copyright © 1992 by Karen Hesse

  All rights reserved.

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  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission

  to reprint the following:

  Poems from The Works of Alexander Pushkin by

  Alexander Pushkin. Copyright © 1936 and renewed 1964 by

  Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN 9781466801325

  First eBook Edition : October 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hesse, Karen.

  Letters from Rifka / Karen Hesse.

  Summary: In letters to her cousin, a young Jewish girl chronicles her family’s flight from Russia in 1919 and her own experiences when she must be left in Belgium for a while when the others emigrate to America.

  [1. Emigration and immigration—Fiction. 2. Jews—Fiction. 3. Letters—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.H4364Le 1992

  [Fic]—dc20 91-48007

  First edition—1992