Stephan and Soshana Raczynski, Beit Avraham Avinu — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Beit Avraham Avinu is a story about an impossible love that takes place during one of the darkest periods known to humanity -- the love of Zuzana (Shoshana) née Dezent, a Jewish girl born in Vilna who lost her parents in the Vilna ghetto Aktions, and Stefan Raczynski, the Righteous Among the Nations. With the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa and the German invasion of Lithuania in the summer of 1941, the Catholic Raczynski family's farm northeast of Vilna slowly became a safe haven for persecuted Jews fleeing the Aktions and murders taking place in Vilna and the vicinity - an island of sanity, humanity and hospitality and of hope in a sea of cruelty, evil and death. In the evolving routine of life, an extraordinary relationship developed between the Catholic mother and the persecuted Jewish mother, between the father of the family and the wise and grateful Jewish grandfather, between the younger sister and the frightened Jewish child - and especially between the eldest son Stefan and the lonely Jewish girl Zuzana. The book Beit Avraham Avinu recounts the life of the isolated village house in which many Jewish refugees survived the murder in the killing pits and fields: fear and terror alongside friendship, power and love; despair alongside hope and the life growing out of the depth of loss. The experiences of Stefan and Shoshana Roczynski - two young people tossed between terror and longing, between horror and passion and the destruction of Europe under the Nazi occupation and the building of a new life in Eretz Israel - were written in the third person by their granddaughter Hila Sharon. The author leads the reader through the mazes of danger involved in hiding Jews and describes the complex relationship between rescuers and survivors, the construction of a new life after the war and the longing for Eretz Israel, and the making of aliyah in the late 1950s. The book also touches on the disappointment and sense of non-belonging that accompanied the Christian Stefan during his years in the Jewish state and on the complex issue of the Righteous Among the Nations in Israel.