Instructor Comments - Jack and Rochelle

"I have taught Jack and Rochelle for three years now, usually in conjunction with other Holocaust texts like Night , by Elie Wiesel, Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl, and Art Spiegelman's Maus I & II .Jack and Rochelle is a favorite of many students. They are especially attracted to it, I think, because it relates something of the environment outside the camps and because the love of Jack and Rochelle is such a beacon of light in a dark moment of human history." -- David Murphy, Stillwater Area High School, Stillwater, MN

"I used Lawrence Sutin's Jack and Rochelle in my symposium course, which was titled "Narratives of Survival." The book was crucial because it gave my students a sense of the significant role Jews played in resisting and fighting back against the Nazis during World War II. This memoir tells the story we haven't heard. The story of the holocaust is well known, which is not to say it doesn't need to be heard and heard again, but Jack and Rochelle is a startlingly important document of the Partisan groups and Jewish resistance. Not one of my students had ever heard of these groups before they read Jack and Rochelle. They found the book engaging and moving, and I plan on using it again in this course next year."
-- Chris Freeman, College of Saint Benedict/Saint Johns' University, Collegeville, MN